


Let's Play A Game

by GypsyMoon



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Balances of choice and emotions, Barriers Crossed, Dancing, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gunshot Wounds, POV Natasha Romanov, Past Torture, Protective Steve Rogers, Regrets, Rough Kissing, Trust Issues, Unresolved Sexual Tension, closeness, dares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-04-13 03:46:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 46,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4506522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GypsyMoon/pseuds/GypsyMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romangers partnership one shot series collection, post Avengers. Natasha uses her mastery of skills to test Steve's limits, but nothing goes as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yvonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yvonne/gifts).



**All characters belong to Marvel Comics**

**I don't own any of these characters**

* * *

 

** **

**Chapter 1**

**{The Game}**

 

Being a subversive operative and melee combatant was never an easy game, but it was fun. Lights reflected in the sparkling fountains of champagne in the middle of the grand ball room, intoxicating and intense. She had a mission to complete. Dressed in black velvet dress, revealing flawless skin and with her long scarlet hair cascading off her back, Natasha leaned her lithe form against the railing. She was fully armed with guns strapped to her shapely thighs. A combat knife was in her beaded handbag with a vial of black widow venom. She was prepared. There was a rare and foreign sense rippling in her veins; there was a emptiness inside her. Fractured emotions and detachment had become a way of survival of the infamous Soviet spy.

Feeling uneasy, Natasha removed the mobile device from her purse, reading Fury's text to engage with caution and complete the mission. Project: Test Run. It was supposed to simple and effective observation with false information authorized by Fury of a missile threat and the allegiance with ex KBG officers who supposedly went off the grid after the STRIKE team raid remote safe houses. She had to play it cool, share no secrets and keep her emotions in check.

Silently, Natasha observed, taking a delicate sip of champagne while pretending to translate the conversation between an older gray haired man and a woman sitting at the across from her position. Pressing the comm lodged in her ear, Natasha spoke in her low husky voice to her partner. "No sighting of him yet. I don't know if Fury is playing with us, Clint. Keep a sharp eyes on parking garage. Look for the motorcycle. I'll engage in more causal method of infiltration."

"I know that voice tone, to well, Natasha," Clint returned with a hint snark in his voice. He was crouched down on ledge adjacent from the casino. His automatic bow slung over his shoulder, and gray eyes focused on the parked vehicles surrounding the main entrance. "No sign of the bike. I'll scan the garage. If is he here, I will let you know, and by the way, love the dress. Did Stark's bank account pay for that?"

A shadow of a smirk twisted over Natasha's lips, "Focus, Barton," she said in a teasing voice. "I didn't come here to be distracted... We have t handle this like any other mission." She stole glance at the elevator. "Are the others in-" She paused in the second her green eyes became transfixed on him. Steven Grant Rogers. Her breath clogged in her throat as she felt a shuddering chill of anticipation creep down her spine. His timing was unexpected. How did he manage to elude Clint's hawk-like gaze. It was obvious, the captain was a natural at infiltration and able to blend well in unfamiliar elements. "Clint," she pressed the comm, "I' think our another dancer partner arrive early for the party." There was no response. Irritated. Natasha took a large swig, and turned around, pretending that she hadn't seen him. "If I find out you set this up behind my back..."

"Relax, Nat." Clint replied through the comm. "It was the Fury's idea to send Rogers early. Give the guy a break; Steve's Captain America, after all."

"Unacceptable." Natasha stiffened her lips. "This was supposed to follow all the details. I still think it's bad idea. We're not team players." She seethed, trying to remain calm. "One mistake will jeopardize this whole operation. Rogers is a soldier not a spy." She crossed her arms protectively over her chest, feeling her ample breasts tense against the cold metal of her silencer pistol that she had stuffed under her bra.

"He doesn't even carry a gun..." He was closing in on her space. His two-hundred and forty pound body was dressed in a black tux. Well-define muscles of his torso and abdomen rippling with enhance strength under a pressed white shirt. His mussed blonde hair spiked at the hairline. And she became fixed on his light azure eyes gentle and yet intense as he walked over to the railing. "No, I'm not risking my free time just to babysit America's golden boy because Fury wanted to test my partnership with Steve. I agreed to conduct every order he debriefed to us, but now that I figured out we were deceived by a man who not only defeated HYDRA but also woke up from a ice bath-"

"Agent Romanoff," Steve interupted with a firm voice. A tentative grin stretched over his full lips. His broad jaw clenched as he leaned the powerful bulk of his tall frame against the railing. "I received orders from Agent Hill that you were need in of assistance."

Natasha rolled her eyes. "Listen, Rogers. This is my mission." she declared in a strict false tone. "You have no knowledge on the details that Fury sent me and you're unarmed." She wanted to test his reaction. "I'm guessing you have that shield of yours close at hand..."

Steve seemed taken aback from the bite in her voice. "You don't need a gun to take down target, Agent Romanoff." he spoke in defense. Natasha tightened her jaw, resisting the urge to look into his blue eyes. "I have received the information from Director Fury and I'm not here to impose on your objective, but I am here to protect you."

Unprepared. Clueless. Distraction. "The way I see it, you're out of experience in this class level field of work. You're not an agent of SHIELD." She shot back, taking another sip from the glass, enjoying the assessment with a bit of malevolence fizzing in her veins. It was a fun game to play. "I don't need another partner to watch my back. I have Agent Barton." She had gotten accustomed to having a partner-Clint was her shadow. No one...Not even Captain America would replace that bond they shared. "We handle things differently under Fury's orders, Captain Rogers."

Steve nodded in response, "Understood." He narrowed his eyes, and sighed with a smudge of disappointment on his smooth features. "I guess I'll sit at a table and wait until you need me."

Natasha didn't even spare him a glance, and was just about to move away from she caught a visual of two SHIELD agents dressed as HYDRA operatives climbing up the stairway holding duffle bags. A moment of stillness gave her enough time to recollect the mission. She had to pretend there was a threat. Manipulate Steve into following her lead. She leaned up to him very closely, leveling her stare petulantly at him. Green locked with blue. "You're needed now," she whispered, trying to keep a straight face, hoping that the security cameras would catch her little performance. "Put your arms around my shoulders and kiss me..."

"Kiss you?" Steve nearly choked, flustered. His mouth fell open, dumbfounded. "I'm not going to kiss you, Agent Romanoff. This is a mission. Not a date."

"Well, tonight we'll make exceptions." she replied in a brazen tone, pressing against his hard chest, tilting her head a little, as she gave brushed her lips over the corner of his mouth. She expected a war of tension to arise between them but as she felt his defiant posture slouch under her palms. He looked down at with his blue eyes clouding over with distant memories, almost like he was uncertain and holding a promise.

He was hesitant to compromise.

"Come on, Rogers. This is all a part of the game. You're either in or out?" Natasha implored slowly, her eyes focused on the agents. There was a mixture of fire and ice in her impatient voice, as her lips caressed soothingly over his neck. "When I count to three, you kiss me, and then I pull away, bump into one of those guys over there and then you take them out."

Steve gulped down, a little timid as he felt entrapped into her dangerous allure. "I take it you must do this a lot with Agent Barton?" he grinned, sheepishly.

"If it prevents the mission from going sour, yes. Now, shut up and kiss me, Rogers." she growled, lowly, feeling the raw power of his muscles flex as he dipped his head down and crushed and joined his lips with hers. Steve closed his eyes as the taste of champagne melted and his breath hitched against the feverish suction of fierce hunger. She devoured without taking mercy on him. Stole his breath and took his pulse as she bruised lips stroked over the smooth chiseled skin of jaw.

It was a necessary distraction.

After giving him one last wet embrace of a kiss, Natasha ripped her mouth away and put on the act of being drunk. Within seconds, just has she planned, her shoulder collided into the one of agent's shoulder and she spoke what seemed like an apology in smoky Russian while signaling Steve to infiltrate. He did in a heart beat. He charged directly into action, fist rammed into the jaw of the shortest of the men, and Natasha Natasha slipped her hand into the straps of the bags, vanishing into the shadows of the hallway.

Inhaling the lingering scent of cherry, Steve quickly bashed the operative's heads together and threw hem down the stairs, watching them roll and crumple to a defeat pile at the bottom steps. "Natasha?" he called out, furrowing his eyebrows in confusion.

Natasha headed to the elevator, and pressed the comm. "Mission accomplished, Clint." She traced her finger over her smirking lips, still tasting the kiss. "Rogers, has what it takes to be an effective agent of SHIELD. Send Fury the message that the captain passed his first test. Next time, I won't make it easy for him."

Grinning darkly, she unzipped one of the bags, and looked at the wrinkled Iron Man shirts stuffed inside. "Not bad, Rogers."


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

** **

 

**{2}**

**Dare to Move**

 

* * *

The American soldier Natasha had read up from the SSR files as Steven Grant Rogers, pure, undamaged, resilient and unbreakable, became less of a stranger to her that night. Although she was looking through the glass darkly, she found no reason not to consider his trust. She was fighting a war against ensembles of different emotions that were all symptoms of humanity, something her handlers tried to extract from her back when she was condemned to the Red Room. Humanity was the biggest threat against discipline and order, and she was the brink of feeling a disruption underneath her scarred layers.

Steve was a stranger in her dark world of sin.

Clint told her to give the super-soldier a chance, and that Steve was a decent man who had lost everything since that day of crashing into the ice beds of Greenland. In other words, Captain Rogers the poster boy of nobility and freedom.

Now, Natasha had tried to focus, but risks were all around her. The weight of the MK12 MOD 1 rifle slung against her tensed shoulder caused friction underneath her black stealth suit. She rested on her boot on the cement ledge of the building, getting into immovable stance. Scarlet hair whipped against her pale cheeks and green eyes intently staring at the adjacent building across. She received the order by Fury to take out a HYDRA agent who downloaded German prison records from 1946 including the cell number of a certain Leviathan operative. It was specter drive-a ghost file. Tonight Clint was overseas doing a recon mission with Agent Brock Rumlow; she was flying solo on this mission, at least that's what the Russian spy thought.

"Agent Romanoff," He whispered in a command-ridden baritone from the shadows."Fury informed me that this isn't an unaided mission. You need someone to watch your back. If you dismiss my help..." He halted in his words, and commanded his reservations not to compromise with her stubbornness. "I will still follow my orders, Ma'm."

Rolling her eyes at that, Natasha slowly turned her head, and caught a glimpse of Captain Rogers leaning against the wall, broad arms enfolded over his sculpted chest, shield rested at his leather boots. His neat blonde hair messy with sloppy tendrils hooding over his brow. It was a rare sight to see; Captain America without his spangle uniform, but in normal clothing. A motorcycle jacket, red shirt and faded jeans. She blinked again, aware of his intrusion and concerns about the mission, while he was watching her, focused and unyielding.

Catching herself off guard, Natasha blinked and scoffed a little. Unnerved, she felt like the super-solider had invaded her space-her natural element.

"Listen, Cap" she retorted, firmly, trying to keep her fierce tone freed from contempt. She wasn't in the mood of getting ordered around from him. She had to play another game to deceive his pure and heart layered with four cardinal virtues of mortal excellence. Everything opposite to her mortal code. Her gaze fell onto his shield, locking on the silver symbol of a star in the center of blue. It was his pledge. "This isn't the world that you once knew. We do things differently without compromising with other people's mistakes. I will take a kill shot if I feel that it is necessary to accomplish the mission. You can stand there and watch me finish my job. Or you can scout the area in case we have guests coming to our little party."

"You do things your way, Agent Romanoff. I will do things my way." Steve clarified in mild tone, doing his utmost not to sound infuriated by her lack of trust. He couldn't reason with her. Instead, he grabbed his shield and walked over to the other corner of the roof. They both felt an arising storm of tension preparing to clash between them. He spun around, giving her a hard, searing glare of sky blue. "Know this, Agent Romanoff, if there is any sign of hostility against your life, I will not waste a second to engage."

"You actually think that I would let you jump in anything you want, Rogers?" she blurted.

Steve clenched his jaw. "You're my partner on this mission, whether you like it or not, Romanoff," he raised his voice, standing his ground against her vexation.

She shot him a lethal glare a long moment, pressing her lips into a rigid line of displeasure by the gleaming in his eyes. She listened to the world around her. Traffic, monotonous and bustling all into a cluster of symphonic waves. Moonlight was reflecting against glass panes of windows. A light humid breeze caressed her skin. There was absence warring against human connection in those seconds when she dared her green eyes to wander over his chiseled and boyish face. He looked so young, naive and vulnerable. The kiss they shared at the casino was just used as an method of distraction. The deeper, she looked into his light and static blue eyes, she drifted further into his world, and felt something anomalous conforming against her heart.

The details of the mission resurfaced, she pivoted her boots when she vision caught a flash of red. She wasted no time, positioned her rifle and aimed the scope marker lines at the window. She closed her left eye, and pulled the trigger. Thunder struck the dead silence and glass shattered as Steve instantly watched a body of the operative drop to the floor. Natasha fastened the safety lock, and mirrored his dumbfounded expression with dark smirk. "You were saying, Cap..."

"What if there was hostage in there? You could have missed." Steve growled. His torso heaved hot and hot breath as he looked down at the gun. "You acted reckless and didn't think about other lives in that building." His brow creased and eyes glinted like molten daggers of steel. He was enraged. "All lives, whether innocent or corrupted deserve a chance to face justice...Not execution."

Natasha gritted her teeth, and stared at his unreadable face."Sometimes there isn't a choice to be made when risks become threats. You either sit back and let the bad guys cheat the game, or you dare yourself to take your own risk and find a way to win by removing some of the pawns." She spoke with a hint of spite, and looked at his shield. "That trash can lid of yours isn't going to kill anyone. It's a relic."

Steve nodded his head knowingly."Yeah, it maybe a war relic, but I find sometimes it's better to save lives than destroying them, Agent Romanoff." He lifted his shield, rubbing his hand over the star. "I'm a soldier and I will fight every day prevent this world from pointing guns at everyone's heads. This isn't freedom...It's just a repeated mistake that rose from the dark ashes of war history." A torture look welled in his eyes, and he lowered the shield. "I've played games..." There was gravity of regret in his rough voice. "Risk is always on the battlefield and when you're in crossfire sometimes you have lose a few good players to taste victory."

This was unexpected conversation. A battle over their differences and confessions.

Natasha knew that she could easily walk away from him, leave the soldier alone and watch the agents of SHIELD clean up the aftermath of her hit, but something was drawing her closer to him. An invisible force that seemed too powerful to fight against. "You're terrible at breaking the ice, Rogers." she said informatively. "I read up at the SRR files. You did some dark things with your Howling Commando unit?" She slagged her posture, smirking as his blue eyes flashed with disdain. "I'm guessing Captain America, doesn't have angel wings under his uniform after all?"

"No, I'm not perfect. And yes, we compromised, but my unit and I did it to ensure freedom against HYDRA's tyranny." His lips folded into a downhearted frown. "We saved a lot of people. Isn't that the reason why we fight, Tasha?"

In the second Natasha heard him call her by a different name—Clint's nickname he made up for her after their missions in Europe, her viridescent eyes flared ire. He had crossed the line. "Only my partner calls me by that name. You have a lot of nerve, Rogers." She squeezed her hand into a fist, knuckles turned into a hue of ivory and blood pumped faster into her veins. "You don't know who I am...And what that name has meant to me." She let him penetrate her walls. He was a stranger...Not a partner or a friend. Just a new player on SHIELD's game board. The weight of her past dragging her to earth sinking beneath her feet. He invaded her. "I think you should ask Fury to find you a different partner...Stark is always available."

"Natasha?"

She wanted to purge him out of her mind. Whipping her messy red hair off her shoulders, she gracelessly moved to the stairwell, reaching for the door. No words were unspoken as she refused to look back him. Reaching for the knob, she disappeared into the dark sables of the stairs. Suddenly, she froze in an alarming stance, gripped the railing in the second her r intent eyes fixed on a knife holding her reflection. A hand yanked her hair, jerking her head back and a foul stench of stale vodka caused an unpleasant feeling to bubble in her stomach.

_Strike back. Don't look. Fight. Kill. Run. Fight._ A million words flooded her mind, fingers snagged her uniform and hair. The coldness of the blade pressed against her jugular, adding the general lumps of dread building in her throat.

She could only bite into the wrist, kick and elbow the attacker, because the gun had been compromised and she unarmed. Screaming was her only option, as she felt the knife snake down her thigh and pressure of unwanted weight crush her ribs.  _You're not a damn damsel in distress. You're a cold blooded killer...The Black Widow._

"Let her go!"

Hearing the powerful boom of a familiar voice completely throw her distress aback, Natasha snapped her head up, and stared at the towering figure in the doorway above her.  _Steve._ The edge of his shield glimmer in the darkness as he held it firmly to his torso. She glared at him. "I can handle this on my own."

The captain didn't look convinced. His cut-stone features tightened and jaw clenched hard. The fire in his blue eyes made her heart skip a beat. Sweat drenched his blonde hair as he engaged a stare-off with the HYDRA operative. Silent and patience. His eyes narrowed at the knife held against her throat. "I'm going to lower my shield and you will drop the knife. We will be on equal footing."

The HYDRA operative didn't speak. He was a mute. His dark eyes revealed fear, that was enough for Steve to descend another step. Natasha felt immobilized as the attacker's other hand grazed a poisonous dart against her lower back, threatening to pierce through the leather. "He wants the ghost file." She swallowed, her face paling. "If he doesn't have it, I will be poisoned. That's all his will negotiate."

Steve leveled his hardened eyes on the agent, "How can you understand him?" he asked, he didn't seem daunted by the threat.

"Breathing patterns. I learned the methods of communication back in Russia." She confirmed angrily in a straining voice. "You have a choice to take Rogers, do you want to save your partner or ensure that HYDRA will never obtain our secrets?"

Steve felt his throat burn, and breathed through his nostrils. 'I don't know how the game works with SHIELD, but in the front lines. We always made the hard choices, and I'm going to do one right now."

"You're stupid enough to try, Rogers." she muttered, coldly. The dart was pricking through her suit.

"Would you leave Barton to die for a piece of technology?"

She seethed against clamped teeth. "We all know the risks of security. A life doesn't hold much value. It is weakness enemies use against us."

"All lives...Whether good or bad is vital, Natasha. Including yours. Steve returned with a low growl, his eyes scanned over the weak points of the operative's body, and then charged down the steps, his shield fastened on his wrist, and with force thrust of his arm he bashed his weapon into the man's thorax. Once the man groaned in pain, Steve took Natasha into his a secured embrace of his arms and vaulted off the stairs with his enhanced agility. Natasha swiped her handgun from her leg hostler and discharged a bullet into the operative's skull as Steve carried her into the hallway. His shoulder rammed into plaster, and both of them toppled into a storage room.

Natasha groaned with her stomach arched over the compacted muscle of his torso. They were drenched and glistening with feverish sweat. Steve immediately encompassed his solid arm over her waist, pulling the dart out. She was a little stunned and numb. Only a small amount of poison managed to seep into her blood. The Red Room cocktails of serum made her body immune against poisons and toxins."Are you okay?"

"It's not a big deal," she reassured. Her eyes locked onto the smear of blood forming under his lip. "You're bleeding..." She licked her thumb and traced a a gentle touch over soft flush of his bottom lip. "By the way, thank you for saving my life, Steve," she admitted, looking into his trusting shimmer devouring the darkness of his stern and icy gaze. Her fingers rubbed over the slacken edge of his jaw, and she noticed freckles on his throat. Dark one above his Adam's apple. She thought maybe this was chance to really kiss him...Not as the Black Widow, but the true woman that he saw behind the masks. A kiss was powerful thing. A dare. She was tortured, programmed and fashioned to become weapon, instrument and a thief.

His rough palm brushed her cheek. "It doesn't make you weak when you ask for help...It makes you stronger, Natasha." he said. Then, he crunched his abdomen and used his arms as support as he slightly lifted off the floor. She was still latched onto him. "I will never will ask you to consider me as a partner or a friend, but I do care for you enough to risk my life to make sure you have one."

Natasha flicked her eyes down, her face morphed into a taunt expression. Everything threatened to brim at the surface. Awareness swept through her and ingrained guilt found a way to slice deeper into her bones. Her personal space had been torn absurder. Her emotions unraveled as a throb of panic made her heart fluttered in her chest. No one had ever spoken those words before to her. It was unfamiliar and a little daunting. She didn't stop looking into his the fathoms of blue, heat roiled in in all the pockets of her gut. Something was there, faint and small, but it was real between them. Attachment. Need...Desperation?

"You don't know what you're saying, Rogers," she said. Doubt criss-crossed against her heart. "Life to me isn't precious. It's a debt that collects regrets and pain on a ledger. To save someone would be like trading yourself up." Natasha inclined her lithe form into a sitting position, keeping her arms enclosed over her exposed chest. "I don't want you to think of me as a heartless person...The truth is, I'm not someone to bargain a life with, Rogers."

He didn't respond at first. Then,Steve parted his lips. "That's not how I see it, Natasha," he said, leaning in closer. His breath ghosted over her skin. She didn't falter back. He twinned his fingers softly through her red strands, staring into her alluring green eyes, before he rested his palm over her jaw, fingers gave her vague trickle of cool relief as he tilted her head back. He brushed his lips against her own. He kissed her.

Natasha closed her eyes, eclipsing his mouth with a gentle kiss, tasting the copper tang of blood and salt intermixed with the pleasant moisture as the collision of soft flesh became a crushing plunge of breathless hunger. Both of them didn't say anything. They let all emotions pour out of them and were on the verge of sharing a different type of partnership while breaking a few rules of the dangerous game.

She didn't run away from him. No snarky retort. No unsettling tension. She threaded her fingers through his damp mussed hair, and her breath stayed even; her coaxing lips claimed his mouth into a breathless kiss of succession.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

 

** **

**3**

**{Shut Up and Drive}**

* * *

She was transfixed on the vibrant red spotlight. A distraction. The humid afternoon sun reflected over the pavement of sidewalks, glaring into the focused green chasms of her calm eyes. Natasha sat comfortably in the leather, her fingers gripped the stiff leather steering wheel; and her lips rubbed to melt the lingering the taste of the strawberry-banana milkshake she had recently consumed while impatiently waiting for Steve to finish his morning run. The car was still in parked at the curb.

They shared only a few words during the drive throughout central Washington. Absolutely no  _secrets unveiled._ Nothing about their hobbies, pasts or childhood. It was boring and uncomfortable.

There was tension building, slowly and nagging. And they were avoiding eye contact, keeping their senses on high alert. Trust was the main issue, and at this moment, Natasha hated inhaling the fresh aftershave wavering from his smooth skin. Mostly because Tony Stark gave Steve a few samples of the latest product which had been shipped from Paris. It was mint, intoxicating and powerful-just like Captain America.

His choice of attire for the mission debriefing, was a century out of style. He wore a muted gray shirt and a pair of iron pressed trousers. Natasha spared him a glance, only to drink in the sight of him sitting rigid in the passengers seat, his light azure eyes dazzled against the sunlight. He tapped his fingers against the door, light azure eyes taking in the scenic view of the city. Clusters of historical buildings, American flags billowing against the summer air and crowds of people bustling towards the crosswalks, most of them were taking on mobile devices and keeping themselves distracted from the world.

"Everything looks so different. When did it all change?" Steve asked, giving her a sideways glance. He exhaled somberly. "I guess when you sleep for seventy years you miss out on a lot of rebuilding."

Natasha knitted her eyebrows together. She pursed her rose lips and narrowed her green eyes to his well-defined biceps, entranced by the sculpted bulk of the massive shadowed by the sleeve of his shirt. Tolerance. It was a word that seemed to betray her whenever she was caught in the weaves of emotional boundaries. The longer she stared, the more she felt the untamed desire to pin him down and engage into a war for dominance

. "I can take you to the library...I'm sure there's lots of books on American history, probably covered in dust though," she finally returned with her lips curved into a dark smirk of snark. He stared long and penetrating at her, with a serious expression plastered over his chiseled skin.

"Natasha," he said with a hint of a growl in his firm voice. "Can you just stop with the sass? I'm trying to have a simple conservation with you."

She narrowed her eyes, and furrowed her brows before saying, "You're not in position to order me around, Rogers. Shut up and let me drive." She snapped, feeling like they've had this conversation many of times in the past few days, each time his ethical reasoning made more sense to her, but it means that she had to follow the moral rules.

She could easily abash all his rules and moral judgments of ' _right and wrong'_ infiltrate HYDRA safe houses and take whatever information she could devour out of her victims. That was in her nature. Instead she reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled into his world that something strange and completely unnatural to her skin. And on top of all of it, Natasha knew that she would starve without his soft lips pressing onto hers.

_Love is for children._

Though she wanted to taste the freedom and clean slate the sins of her tortured past, she was tangled in her own webs she had woven through lies, seduction and brutality. Escaping from the past without having a bullet into her back had been a tough way of living. Adaption was her method of survival. Not clinging onto remnants of emotions of weakness. She refused to allow any man to restore her wounded heart. The plague of the Red Room was ingrained into her skin and she would never find that cure. Not even found in the purest of hearts.

Steve sighed. "Sorry, it's been a long time since I've been in a car with a beautiful dame." he admitted in a grim tone. "The last time was when I had stolen a truck in Nazi Germany with Agent Peggy Carter. " His blue eyes became darkened with a distant cloudiness of regret. "It was in another lifetime." He reached for his pocket compass, and rubbed his thumb gently against the tarnished silver. Natasha shifted her eyes tentatively at him; watching a shroud of sadness etch over his boyish features. He carefully placed the compass back into his pocket.

Her fierce exterior became soft. She caressed her hand onto his jaw and looked steady into his light eyes that matched the color of the clear sky. He looked at her with a sincere gaze. She couldn't push him away and leave him alone to search for a new purpose. He looked displaced. Heaviness piled on her heart and then clicked her seat belt, pulling her body closer. There was resistance. He leaned aback into the seat; keeping himself guarded until he felt the warmth of her touch seep into his pectorals. He cared about her, but Natasha wasn't Peggy. She was a partner and maybe along the road a friend.

Steve eyed her wearily. "I think we should go to debrief meeting." He swallowed, his skin turning flush. "The mission always comes first, above everything else. If we sit back more lives will be the cost because we didn't act in time to save them, Natasha."

"Why do you care so much about saving people?" she asked, bluntly. Steve listened to the bitterness in her voice. "It just causes a lot of pain if you can't save some one who doesn't deserve to die." she confessed, noncommittal.

Steve frowned. He looked deeply at her, trying to prevent a prick tears from overwhelming him. She saw the burden of memories welled into the darkness swirling over his crystallized blue irises. "I don't save people because I'm soldier and that is my pledge, Natasha. I risk my life because I believe in second chances. No one has the right to take that freedom away." He dropped his gaze down to his track shoes. Every time he thought about Bucky Barnes on the train, holding onto the bar and looked up at him with terrified pale blue eyes, he felt condemned by guilt. He let out a ragged sigh, painful against his chest. "Yes, I've failed some good men in the past, however if I didn't try to save them then I would only see myself as a selfish coward...A failure."

"Well," She paused, recollecting. "That's a good answer. Not what I was expecting, but still right to the point."

Steve smiled, brokenly, and then he twisted the cap off the water bottle.

"Who was the person you failed to the save the most?" she queried, using a low sympathetic tone to invasingily pry out from information from his distraught shell.

"I have a list," Steve replied evenly, with an irritable tone, and he glanced through the window. Natasha felt the shuddering chill of dismay merge against her bones. There was a dull ache in her heart, executing pulses to her brain to keep herself distant from him. In contrast of feeling her blood thaw, he didn't exchange a soulful look at her. He released another long breath."It's pretty hard to wake up and find out that some your friends never had a chance to marry a dame and have a family. Just a dream that all soldiers carry." He tried not to think about the delusional state Peggy when he visited her at the nursing home a few days before. He tried to find her again.

"I read up on your SSR file. You had a friend named James Barnes. He went missing in action. At least, that's the information documented."

Hearing that curious tone, Steve angled his head as his blue eyes met green. His lips slightly parted with the light brushed over his sharp jagged features. Breath was pacing and fingers squeezed over his knees as he shot at intense gaze at the red haired spy. "The information you read is a cover up from the truth. I know what happen to my best friend. I will forget that day." he said, his expression sobering. "James Barnes died a war hero for his country. Just keep it like that and say nothing less about the truth."

Natasha averted her gaze to the traffic waiting for the light to change green. "I'll be sure never to ask that question again. Do you want a milkshake?" she asked, gesturing a hand to a plastic cup with a straw."It's probably a little warm, but I thought maybe because it's hot and you are sweating that maybe you would like something refreshing."

Steve's eyes fell. "Thank you, Natasha," He whispered quickly, lifting the cup up to his lips and took a sip.

"See, I can be nice when I want to be, Rogers," She gave him a rueful smirk.

He furrowed his brow, looking dumbfounded. His seized up. Muscles tensed under his shirt. "Wait," he was catching onto her game. His tone could be mistaken for accusing due to his frustration. "There is no debriefing. You just wanted to talk to me. Didn't you?" He grounded out and he was becoming sickened by her deception. His nose crinkled and lips twisted into a taunt grimace.

She didn't say a word in response, just stared at him darkly.

"I thought maybe this would be a great way to get to know you without the uniform."

Steve released a disheartened sigh as he again lowered the milkshake and his stare with it. "You could just told me...especially since you text urgent on my phone." His tone was as close to apologetic as he would allow. His mind was still warring with this surveillance job, but his heart was blossoming at having Natasha with him again to alleviate his turmoil before it could engulf him. He allowed himself a respite as he turned his softened gaze towards hers. "I'm not mad, since I always try not to live in the past, but next time just tell me the truth."

Natasha smirked, shaking her head. "We both know that's something I've never been good at, Rogers." she replied with a smoky whisper. "In the matter of this circumstance, I think it's safe to say that we both live to deep into the past." Steve watched her scarlet strands glide over her pale cheeks as she intently fixed her gaze on the square broadness of his jaw. "It doesn't matter now, we both have secrets that can never be unlocked."

He sighed as he closed his eyes - missing the warmth of a woman's touch - feeling a semblance of peace and calm wash over him until he remembered his current position in the car. He opened his eyes and took her hand in his own, giving it a small squeeze. His posture took on the form of the ever-vigilant Captain America and once again as he regarded her.

"I'm glad you're finally learning to trust me, Natasha. I really am. But now isn't the time for us to share words. I have to go see Peggy. I promised her that I would visit her today after the meeting. I never break a promise to a friend who needs me." He pointed in the direction of the park. "Maybe when we're not busy, we'll both share another batch of milkshakes together. I'll buy next time."

_This wasn't the Black Widow._  Natasha felt the absence of her own hard core emotions fleeting. Desperation and need began overloading in her heart. She had to run away, extract herself from this situation before things would become personal and secure. "Okay, that sounds that plan." She smacked lips together, her fingers coiling the wheel. "Do you know what flavor I like?"

Steve cocked up an eyebrow. He latched his stare on her full lips, noticing a smear of pinkish cream on a corner. "Strawberry?"

"Close enough," Natasha said, turning the key fob and powerful V8 engine roared to life. She still couldn't escape from his blue eyes. "I will see you around or when you get called back into action."

He smirked sheepishly, "You've got my number." He opened the door, and causally stepped outside and she was entranced and memorized by his planes of muscles of his V shape body as he straightened to his towering full height of 6'2 inches. He nodded back with a feeble smile. "Take care, Natasha." he said, closing the door.

Natasha curved her lips into a sly grin, watching him bump into a older man and listening to the politeness of his humble voice. The captain was too good for her.

Shaking her head, Natasha drove the sports car to the stoplight, and shifted her eyes to Steve still talking to the elderly man. And she whispered, "See you around, Rogers."

The Corvette engaged with a surge of acceleration once the light switched to green and she vanished into the lanes of traffic and turned left.

She kept on driving---- _running._

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**{Breaching the Walls}**

* * *

Natasha felt the invasive sting penetrating into her right arm. Weakness defiled the peak human conditioning of the Red Room. It was something her enemies did not share—it was a violation to the hard core exterior of the Black Widow. She refused to feel the warmth of his touch encompass over her exposed skin. She wasn't disarming herself for Captain America.

"Can I look at your arm? Steve asked with a strain in his voice. "You kinda took a bad fall off the cliff when you saved that kid."

Natasha sealed her lips shut. Tension was a thickening wall between them. He regretted invading her space in those moments of utter silence. She was rigid and cold in front of him, scarlet locks drenched and curly as her back was turned. He didn't expect to gain her attention, and he didn't know how to make her feel comfortable enough in out in the open. Out of her natural elements of the shadows. She was in his world. Bleeding and stubborn, purposely giving him the impression that he easily failed.

Still, Steve didn't grant her space. Instinctively, he placed the shield down and knelt down beside her. He was breaching her icy barrier. "Listen," she drawled, and shot him with a piercing glance, searing into his light azure eyes obscured by the helmet. There was no emotion in her voice. It was dark and cold. Surprisingly, his tender demeanor didn't seem all that daunted or bothered. "I don't need your help. I can handle things on my own." she grounded out, with a bite in her low voice. Either way, he didn't falter back. It was clearly, he was standing his ground. Unnerved, Natasha clenched her jaw. "Why don't you go and scout the area?"

"Gee, are you always this stubborn with Agent Barton?" he muttered, leveling his blue eyes at her torn sleeve. He inspected the red gash highlighting over the pale skin. "You're bleeding pretty bad."

"Thanks for giving the details. Did you go to medical school in Brooklyn?"

"My ma was a nurse." Steve replied in a gentle tone. He resisted the urge to rip her sleeve off and mend the wound. His mouth pressed into a firm line as his words failed to strengthened him against the radiant sight in beside him. Tangled and mussed red strands dangled over her exposed skin and framed her perfectly sculpted angelic face, and life wasn't absent in her fierce green eyes glaring at him. Steve felt utterly vulnerable...He allowed those feelings to dwell for only a passing moment before he blinked, and reached deep within to regain clarity and his voice. "She taught me how to assess wounds on beautiful and stubborn dames." he felt his lips curve into a weak smirk. "Much like you, Natasha."

Hearing the soothing cadence in his baritone, Natasha narrowed her eyes to vine crawling from the earth and a red desert flower slowly blossoming to caught the light. Her skin was glazed with perspiration and the leather felt like it coated over her bones, but she refused to take off her jacket. "I know the risks of every mission. The standard basis of surviving and taking care of wounds. This isn't strange to me...I have lots of scars that tell a piece of my life's story, but you probably have no wounds thanks to the serum."

Steve shook his head, releasing a despondent breath all the while discarding his helmet. She spared a glance at him, focusing on the messy blonde tresses hooding over his eyes. "If you knew the battlefield, you wouldn't judge my past. All soldiers carry wounds. Some are internal."

"You're saying that you have pain deep inside," she returned, trying to justify her own words. "Grief or something?"

"Why do you care?" he asked, with a pensive tone.

"There are a lot of forms of pain in this business that sometimes gives you no scars to bury. Pain is just natural to me."

He creased his brows at that. "It doesn't feel natural with me."

"So you do have guilt," Natasha scoffed, playing it cool and tempering with his emotions. When she swept her dark eyes over his massive form, there was no sentiment reflecting in darkness of her pupils. There was only vacant shadows, unpredictable and lethal to her beholder. Natasha searched his face. His crystal blue eyes wandered over her tensed shoulder. No much, but just enough to make a faint hiss escape from her clenched teeth. She tried her best to ignore the super-soldier as he crouched down pliant and still under her shadow. Her instints rendered him as her prey and sensed his concealed loss of his best friend...James Barnes. She had to downplay this situation before he would engage.

"Is it because you failed to save Barnes?" She was trudging in emotional territory. "It must still be very painful to lose a friend on a mission?" Her eyes held a shimmer of malevolence that mirrored his despair. "And given the fact you never got closure, I think it's relevant that you will fail again. Mistakes always outweigh the sacrifices, and if you could choose to go back, would you save him?"

He wore a distant semblance, and searched beyond the layers of his soul. No one knew his pain...The loss he endured after he watched his best friend fall because he didn't risk another inch to grab Bucky's marred hand. Even with what had transpired that day, the crushing feeling that piled on his heart, he did consider bargaining with the impossible, and replaying that shattering memory. He would do something different, but the future would be ultimately changed because of his selfish actions to catch his friend's ghost in the abyss of winter's wrath.

"Some part of me wants to go back, if I did find a way," he rubbed his dry lips, pushing his way through the barrage of memories. "I would take the fall, because that's what a captain does...He makes the tough choices to protect his team."

She couldn't shut him out. There was silence between them. She detected his need to feel whole again. He was broken and lost. Everything he fought for as a soldier with the Howling Commandos was just captured in old photographs and stored in boxes. His friends were names on fading gravestones and his love was a old woman trapped in gray storms of delusions. He had nothing. Just his alloy shield and spangled uniform. It was a price of freedom. A unrewarding life that he allowed himself to deserve because of a choice he made.

Taking a deep breath, Natasha summoned a fraction of a humanity to become exposed to him. Steve found her absorbing the details, almost like she was considering to feel again. He also found reliance, protectiveness and desperation; all the interwoven pieces of emotions, there was something hidden within her, a mortal concept that hadn't been extracted from her cruel handlers. She wasn't made out of stone...She had fragile threads in her soul, and fears of detachment and dying alone without an existence.

Natasha didn't want to feel attachment. She tore her eyes away from him, and searched for a distraction. "I rather not make the tough choice. Death is death. There is no point dwelling on hope," she finally said, dipping her eyes shut. All she saw was shades of red. "It doesn't exist."

"If that's what you want to believe, Natasha," he affirmed. His eyes fixed on her arm, and his hand shadowed over her wrist. He felt the waves of heat met the caress of his fingers. There was some kind of connection between them now, a surge of trust that wasn't there before. He saw the dark tempests in her gaze lift when the gentleness of his touch met her skin. "I think you are searching for it..."

Her heart started to thump faster. Her eyes stung and the tone of her smoky voice dropped to a clip of softer breath. "I don't know where to find it in something that isn't permanent," she unveiled, the essence of the moment that she shared with him, it was a real sense of comfort and it made her feel less cold, but something was forming, deeper and she didn't want to ruin the external peace. She'd been locked in a prison of isolation, straying away from human contact. She didn't trust anyone other than Clint. And now she was finally understanding the true meaning of partnership.

"It took me a lifetime to get where I am today," she said, her voice stabbing into his heart. Her eyes held the devious glare of a demon. "I'm not asking for easy way out, but if I had a chance to relive my past...I would find a way to change those nightmares into dreams.," she winced, the slash of the humid breeze entered her open wound, making the burning sting unbearable.

Steve moved his hand to the gash. She didn't push him away. Acceptance. She allowed him to deliver the thermal heat over her marred flesh. He relieved the sickening pressure with gentle and circular strokes with his large hand. There was no walls blockading him, and she sat on the rock, breathing in the air, feeling his touch invade her blood and giving her a sense of release to become human again without pulling her strings and controlling her to play another game that would result in gruesome and not a worthwhile death.

At that moment, it was terrifying, he was pure and angelic. She was rotten and murderous.

Even though, her past condemned her not to feel, she made a choice in that split second, and she caressed her shaky fingers over his rough knuckles, and tried to establish the fundamental truth that somewhere underneath the scarred and restitched layers there was a woman searching for a purpose other than being a killing machine. An offline weapon that SHIELD reactivated when her talents were needed for accomplishing a mission.

In those uncertain, tranquil moments where Natasha unmasked all emotions of detachment and complacency, she made a choice, a  _good_  choice. She just let herself become a human, allowed herself to watch him in the light with some type of foreign, growing sense of trust. She allowed herself to become completely raw and real She became affected by the sincerity gleaming in his sky blue eyes. "...maybe one day I will dream again."

Steve wasn't sure what to say to her. He'd been drifting in his regrets. He settled his stare at her and listened to the echoes of his heart. Natasha was undeniably beautiful. The Black Widow was bred in a sordid branch of the inhumane world of HYDRA. He found a glimpse of the real woman under the empty, stoic and placid semblance of the assassin. He found the goodness and steadiest of her soul, but her green eyes held terrors. And there was a powerful need to liberate her from the weaves of her past swelling up inside him.

"Natasha," he whispered her name, not sounding regal like a captain, but soft and timid like the Brooklyn kid he still considered himself to be under the vigorous muscles. She was a piece of beauty that harbored a sinister and deadly secret in the hands of monsters and demons; freedom from the foreshadowing storms was all she ever wanted. "Do you have trust in me?"

Natasha didn't answer him at herself. Self-preservence was her method of escaping the arising storm. Now, she felt the clash of both worlds as the reverence of her cool poise and confidence dwindled into small threads. It was inconsequential. "I don't trust anyone, Rogers." she solely admitted, shifting away from his concerned gaze. She can to reconcile with her heart before unlocking it for him to enter.

He was visually taken back by the iciness in her tone, and lowered his eyes. He breathed. "I trust you with my life."

"You're a fool," she frown devolved into a scowl, and he watched her expression change into something darker, emotionless. "I don't protect lives...I'm not a good person. I get the job done and make a mess when the lights go out. Red is what paints my world."

He gave her a disquieted fractured look. "Let me ask you something, if Clint needed you to save him, would you do it?"

"I think you already know that answer," she curled her lips into a sly smile, hiding her pain.

He sighed. "I trusted Bucky every day with my life. He always had my back in the alleyways and battlefield. He was my partner and brother. He saved me when I couldn't stand and fight..." A hint of nonchalance crept over his chiseled and sweat-slacked features. "...he's still watching my back."

"There is a difference between you and me," She released a shallow breath, regarding him with a guarded look. "Barnes was your friend. There was no price to pay through a debt. Clint and I share a world with SHIELD. He spared my life and gave me a chance, not because he trusted me, but there something he said that convinced me to follow his shadow and I never looked back."

Steve revealed no judgement in his gaze. This wasn't the first time he felt the guilt prying his heart open since he'd woken up in the future, that he'd gathered scattered pieces of his dreams. In spite of all the battles he endured as Captain America, the greatest one he felt defeated from the most was the war inside his broken heart.

He wanted to transcend back into the past. He wanted to share a life with Peggy Carter and commit himself to his passion of art. He was an artist, not famous, but he had a gift that random people, waitresses and doctors, saw in his sketchbooks. The only person, who saw his talent was Bucky, even though Steve was color blind since birth, it never stopped him from capturing the world around him with smudges of graphite and brush strokes of oils.

Why was he allowing his thoughts to drift again?

A dull smile caressed over his commanding features. 'I was Bucky's shadow...I used to follow him everywhere in Brooklyn. Sometimes I wonder why he chose to become my friend, he was the best..." Natasha stared at him like she pierced through his soul. "Anyway, we should take care of your arm before it gets infected, Natasha. So, let me help you? I'm not going to tell anybody, but you need to get that cleaned up and bandaged before it gets worse."

Natasha listened, her demeanor changed. The coldness slipped out of her and she unzipped her jacket, slowly peeling the leather off her skin, revealing a red tank top underneath. Steve removed a pocket knife from a compartment of his belt, slicing his own uniform as he cut a piece off, and dabbed it into a puddle below his boots. Carefully, he swiped the material over her skin, washing away the smears of blood and pressing coolness onto the opened gash. 'By the way, if you consider yourself heartless, then why did you save that little girl from falling?" he asked.

She fell silent as she digested on those words, searching and fighting against her programming. A rumble of discern shook her heart and she nipped her lip. "I guess some part of me does care enough to save a life."

"Good answer," he said, wrapping the dampened material over her tone forearm. "That should stop the blood flow until we get back to the city."

"This is hard for me to say...Thank you, Steve," she whispered her tone devolving into something uncharacteristic. It was new and dis-alarming. She looked deeply into his shining blue eyes and she found a small amount of hope kindling in him.

"Don't mention it, Natasha," he said. with a faint smile gracing over his face.

When her gaze fell onto his fullness of his arched lips, Natasha involuntarily leaned forward and steadied her hands on his face, bringing him closer as heat escape with small pitches of breath, and like a bullet discharging out of pistol she crushed a hard and breathless kiss over his yielding mouth. She devoured him, relishing the salty taste of his lips as flesh became coated into a smoldering empowering combustion of relentless and passionate fire.

He broke away, opening his eyes and staring at her. The fading sunset became captured in the emerald swirls of her eyes, filled with softness. For a moment, her hand splayed over his broad expanse of his iron-like chest, fingers spread across the silver embossed star, they saw it in the other's gaze.  _I need to feel again._ His breaths evened , and doubt slipped out him as his hand weaved through her disheveled hair. He wanted to say something to her, but instead he stood up and picked up his shield.

She didn't say anything, either. She looked at the dark blue scrap of his uniform raveled on her arm, and then lifted her gaze to him, she managed to hold a smirk on her bruised lips.

"I know that we have our differences, Rogers." she lowered her eyes, playing another game of risk with the captain. "You need to know that I—"

Steve invaded her space again, and pressed a finger tentatively on her lips. "I don't have to say anything, Natasha," he whispered evenly. "I know the truth." he felt the urge to smile.


	5. Chapter 5

** **

**{Hide and Seek}**

* * *

She felt the coldness.

Natasha was sitting in the darkness of the safe house, listening to the pelting rain hit the window panes as straits of distant terrors echoed throughout the darkened streets. Violent flashes of lightning illuminated the dank apartment.

She was sitting at a table, fingers drumming over the scuffed wood and eyes focused and aware of the encroaching shadows. Looking vaguely over her choice of meal, she picked off the toppings of the oven baked pizza, she hadn't even bothered to save a distasteful piece for her newest partner—Captain Steven Rogers.

This was her method of survival, and yet she fought against the rumbles of discontentment erupting from her stomach. She never ate heavy after a successful mission.

Breathing in the stale air, Natasha was in natural element. No one physical hands could attack her—just the cold merciless clutches of her past.

She was searching for the light beyond the intertwining weaves of mutant she had believed herself as since the demons stole her humanity—shredded each part of her innocence in pieces and threw the fragments of her dreams to became a ballerina into the ashes. The carnal urges of tasting the succession of the mission still resided deep inside her; ingrained and merged in the cracks of her bones.

Over the reckless years of living under the shadow of a gun, Natasha mastered those olden phantoms of pain to conceal her heart from the impermanent things such as love...devotion..trust and hope. She didn't want to disarm herself to feel his raw power solidify against her fingertips. To taste the wet embrace of his hot lips melt into her yielding kiss of submission. She shared those things before with other men bred from the chambers of the Red Room—victims of her deceptive and black heart.

Before they could strip her emotions down, she struck fast and poisoned them with unforgiving promise that they would taste death if their paths crossed again. That were the methods of survival for the venomous Black Widow spider who lived a solitary life in shadow and waited for prey to enter her web. She would crawl into the vulnerable world and take their strength and leave them desuetude and starving for release.

In her elusive collective ways, Natasha gathered the details on the defiant and commanding soldier that ignited life back into her. Steve was rare. A pure gift to any women who dared to give their hearts to him. Even though, she had crossed lines between mortal choice and vengeance, she still valued their partnership, without seeking deliverance from the infinite chasm of her sins.

_Do you trust me?_

It was a distant reaction of emotional connection. She was trained and designed to be the ultimate femme fatale—manipulation, seduction and the mastery of utilizing any object in her clutch as a weapon-guns, knives, electrical currents, poison and shards of glass.

During her teenage years, she learned how to become a asset of mortal temptation, embodied, brazen smirks and lacquered lips and rich scarlet hair that made her become a lustrous illusion in eyes of weak, condemning men. She knew the term of power. It came in many forms. The handlers in the Red Room injected her with a serum of untamed power-she became like an outsider—a strand of altered DNA inside a web—a cold and unforgiving monster.

Through her experiences and trials, her lithe and graceful body had became a battleground and she was never unarmed—her pistols were hidden in her thigh hostlers, combat knife in her boot and poison smeared against her blood red lips. She was always armed to infiltrate, compromise and destroy.

After years of working with the KBG, Natasha had only allowed Clint Barton to enter her tragic and dangerous world. She trusted him and owed him a life.

_If the darkness swallows you...I will be there to pull you out, Nat._

There was no division between them. Despite Clint's psyche becoming scrambled by Loki's mind enchantment with an infinity stone and the betrayal she had felt when he tried to kill her in the Helicarrier, Fury and the World Security Council had relived him from field duty and placed him as a date recovery agent because they were unsure he could be trusted since those events.

Natasha never broke from the bond they had forged a lifetime before she was given a chance to live both into the light and shadows. She'd spent hours in Fury's office giving her defense, but the decision was already made and given her hidden past, she was raked off and thrown into the gray shades of order and structures. She was off-balance and the scales that weighed her own sins were not leveled. She felt no more security and trust was becoming a thread breaking into unraveled pieces.

"Natasha?" Steve called out in a assertive voice as he stood the doorway. His shield was fastened on his leather shoulder straps. He invaded her space, boots pounding against the wood and creating trial of puddles.

She tried to resist him, pretending that he didn't exist when her eyes averted back to the lines of water sloping down the glass pane of the grime covered window. Steve read her stubborn expressions, and paused in his footing at the table. She crossed her arms over the stiff leather of her jacket, her posture was rigid and defensive. Not welcoming...She gave him the cold shoulder.

Releasing a frustrated sigh, Steve removed his shield off his back, prompting it against a chair. "The storm is getting worse..." He advised, trying to an effort of small talk with her. "We might have to camp here for the night...Unless your planning on getting drenched?"

"Do you always sound like your reading army regulations to women, Rogers?" She replied with a brush of snark in her voice. "It gets old pretty fast."

Steve clenched his jaw, she clearly saw the sheen of water dripping over his lips. His glinting blue eyes wandered over her, until he stopped a gun-probably loaded tucked in a hostler below the curve of her hip. "Do you always carry an armed weapon with you on every mission, Agent Romanoff?" he shot back, keeping his voice even. "Or is it your security blanket?"

Shaking off the oddments of those betraying emotions, Natasha leveled her searing glare at the blonde haired soldier. Captain America. An instrument of liberation. He was sterling, brave, victorious and filled with uncompromising hope. Steve risked his own life day in and day out to protect the lives of people (impure and selfish) and never asked for anything in return. He was a ultimate soldier—patriot and leader. The man who could have his back to the wall and fight until breath ceased to exist in his body. Steve was a shield and Fury wanted him to became remade into a weapon. Just like her.

"At least my weapon of choice is compartment sized. Unlike your trash can lid," she retorted, giving him a glacial and infuriated glare. She resisted the urge to drive the knife into his leather boot. Instead she wore the dark semblance of malevolence, curling her rosy lips into a coy smirk. "You know that shield is a target...Any sniper can spot it a mile away." She lifted herself from the chair, scarlet hair messy and sodden as loose strands fell over her ivory skin. "It maybe indestructible on the surface, but inside there are a few dents."

"Dents?" he repeated, and veered his gaze at the shield. His rigorous planes muscles bunched up uncomfortably under his uniform. He furrowed his brow, trying to understand her meaning. "Yeah, it may not be the your choice of weapon to use in battle, but it has saved a lot of lives..Sometimes it takes more courage to make the choice to spare a life than to end one, Natasha."

Steve crouched down in front of his shield, his hand traced over the fading alloy as he added, "I'm not judging you for the choices you make, but we're a team and just because we've kissed a few times doesn't mean that we're not the other's right partners."

Cold fury didn't avail her. Clenching her jaw, Natasha settled an penetrating gaze at him. A vicious snarl suppressed when she averted her green eyes to droplets of water on the hardwood. Being what seemed like in a temperate storm of emotions; she parted her lips. "Well, at least we agree on something about the mission." She bit her tongue and narrowed her eyes back at the half eaten slice of pizza. Regardless of their past recon missions, she wanted to know the truth that was buried deep inside his damn heart. "I have a question for you, and if you don't answer it, then I really don't care, because I'm not interested in..."

"What's the question?" His prodded, his voice sounded gruff.

"Why did you chose me has your partner?" she said, with uncertainty laced in her voice. "...and I want the honest truth, Rogers."

Steve lowered his gaze, flickers of lightning became trapped inside the depth of his stern azure eyes. His expression was commanding and strict. "You're rather... resilient for an operative, Natasha," he commended. His intense eyes resettled back at her. "You're also reckless and take a lot of risks that becomes a result in the failure to save innocent lives which we pledge to protect. You do mistakes that can be avoided because you allow your instints to carry through, instead of your emotions."

"Well, we can't all be perfect," Natasha shot back, bitterness seeped from her smirking lips. "There's only one Captain America."

"What, you think I don't know how to make the hard choices?" he growled, his lips slanted into a dismal grimace. "I chose to take the serum because I wanted to fight for the little guys. I didn't do for my own selfish interests of proving to jerks who bullied me that I could fight with a trash can lid protecting me from them...I took a leap of faith and trusted in a good man who believed in me..." he trailed off, fighting the grief latched onto his heart. Perhaps he buried confession need to be released, even painful that he had ever felt before. And in some distant ways he trusted her, and used her as a distraction to escape from the slow descent of his torments and grievances of the people he lost ever since he accepted the serum.

Natasha reluctantly listened to measures of remorse in his words.

"I made a promise to my friend that I would never allow this power to corrupt me and turn me into a monster like the Red Skull," he said, his chiseled and youthful visage morphed into a hardened and brooding semblance against the dim candle light flickering on the counter top.

She saw his pain and the inner storms that spiraled deeper into the fathoms of his soul—there were albeit and fractured cracks that ate into his heart each time he drifted back into past as he tried to manage the facade of the refined soldier.

Natasha stared at the window, searching for resolve with a blank gaze."You don't know what it's like to be controlled by power...To watch red cover your reflection because you're a monster..." She swallowed down a lump in her throat."No matter how far you run everything you did while in a trance always chases after you, and there is escape from those demons," she revealed, her genuine words clung to his heart. Sighing out a harsh breath, she met his sincere gaze momentarily, before the shadows formed a barrier in space between them.

"What happens when you stop running?" his voice carried through the darkness, and she closed her eyes in those few seconds of the engaging into a savage conflict between her true herself and devious Black Widow. And she was hesitant to bring him into her gloaming world, the light he carried would be devoured and he would be force to surrender to the darkness.

_I'll keep on running._

Fighting against the twisting corrupted ingrained in her, Natasha reached out a hand to grabbed his arm possessively, holding onto him and urging herself to break out of void. Sensing her distress, Steve tentatively encompassed his hand over her rigid fingers and brought her closer to him. "It's okay," he murmured, looking into her teal eyes as flickers of lightning pierce though the dark sables enveloping over their still bodies. "...you don't have to answer. I already know what happens if you decide to make that choice."

"Look, I'm not proud of this life, Rogers," she said in a flat tone and stiffened her lips. A soothing caress of heat radiated from his rough fingers and coiled against her skin. For a moment, she just looked at him, remembering what a crackling fire felt like when she used to sheltered her smaller form from the dropping temperatures outside the dance school during harsh winter nights.

It had been a life time, since she truly felt warmth reside back into her bones. Although, it spared her from the relentless pricks of ice, heat still felt impermanent.

Steve detected her resistance and moved his hands away from her. Natasha swallowed, her eyes casting back to the shadows as she dug further into recesses of her afflicted mind. "It's kind of hard to live when you've seen so much death."

"Nat," Steve breathed, more understanding. His eyes held a dismal gleam as he watched her ivory face become stripped of guarded emotions. Regrets stirred within him. No masks covered the sincerity that was etched over his wet skin. He was real and not a pretender. She felt safe. "Let's not talk about the past," he whispered raw, and his large hand that held the shield slowly met her own half way in the dim light, and she responded to the gentle flex of his fingers over the spaces of her knuckles.

It was a touch of saving grace.

"What do you want to talk about, Steve?" she asked in a soft voice, watching their fingers interlock as pulses of his enhanced strength coursed against her veins.

Steve felt his lips edge into a tender smile. He leaned his forehead to hers, she never faltered or turned away. She looked deeply into his blue eyes. Lightning flashed violently outside and thunder rumbled and shook the walls. She closed her eyes and felt everything drain out of her in those small moments of allowing his strong arms to embrace her against the threatening storms. He was her shield."Tell me about you dream about?" he soothed.

It was a question that seemed forbidden for her answer, sensing the war inside his heart, Natasha brushed her lips under the sharpness of his jaw, while still holding his hand steady over her gun. She sighed with a tortured breath. "Everything."

Steve rested his chin over her mass of dampened hair, feeling the horrible tension dissolve. His felt her skin warming against him. "Yeah. So do I."

She didn't look up at him. Feeling a sense of relief, her fingers traced over the embossed star of his chest and her thumb stroked against his heart.

And he listened to hers.


	6. Chapter 6

****   


**{Trust}**

* * *

"Natasha," Steve called out in a shuddering pitch of breath; seething against clenched teeth. Everything was blurring into a red pulsing haze. A metal hand coiled over his throat and hoisted his massive body off the elevated platform, making him dangle over the rushing stream of water gushing out of the hallow rusted pipe that morphed into the rectangular shaped reservoir blockaded by cinder blocks and a twisted iron gate. Laden bodies of AIM agents that Natasha had shot with stun teasers were sloshing against the low undertow of water. Their black tactical gear was barely visible against the shadows.

The entire chamber carried a vague and dank stench of rotten decay and rust as it gathered into his nostrils at the same time Steve struggled to regain his breath; lifting his gloved hand, the super-soldier made an effort of quick reflex and seized the robot's arm, pulling the limb outward just enough to fill his lungs with a gulp of stale air.

"Stay where you are, Nat..." Steve commanded as his voice stretched into a deep gnarl mixed with heavy gasps of breath. He was fighting against a rush of pain that spread from his neck to his temple. His vision was swimming into dimming haze of pulsating black. A drone whirled to shoot at her, but Steve hooked his elbow around the neck joints and popped off the head, and then he rammed his shoulder into the metal shell, sending the robot splashing into the floods of water. Taking a cleansing breath, Steve fell into a trance from the vibrant glow of neon blue of Natasha's Widow Bites leading him back to the obstructed area underneath a flight of curved stairs.

Licking the paste off his lips, Steve tasted the warm sticky blood trickling from his nose and slowly making a descent down his bruised chin as he crushed the metal plate with a firm clench of his fist. After releasing the drone from his clutch, Steve glanced back at Natasha holding her pistol leveled to the stairway above her injured form; his blue eyes turned into smoldering embers underneath the shadow of his helmet. Blinking the dark splotches out of his vision, Steve roved his intent gaze back at the drone and then forced his leg up, aligning it with the metallic plates of the robot's chassis. With a raw growl emitting from his dry throat, he rammed his knee full force into the center and sparks flew in the wake of hard muscle crushing against metal.

When the faulty drone receded a step back; Steve felt his ears burn as a deafening screech of metal devoured the sound of the rushing drainage chamber. He quickly turned around, thrusting his arm upwards, gripping an iron bar above him and twisted his torso as he jumped a few inches off the grate, then flipped himself into a 360 degree as his boot knocked the head clean off with a spinning heel kick. Eventually the eruptions of pain stopped and threw the remaining piece of the mechanical body over the edge. Natasha curled her lips into an impressed smirk, trying to mutter something out but the constant sting dragged her voice back down. She lowered the gun onto her thigh, and grazed her cheek against the wall. The blood loss was causing her to slip in and out of unconsciousness. She cursed knowingly that her body would undergo another transfusion.

Natasha felt disconnected with the world. She pressed her back against the cement after several moments of the disturbing pain flooding her veins. It didn't affect her. During her sessions of the dehumanization programs of Department X, the fourteen year old ballerina became immune to the prickling numbness as the cocktail of enhanced chemicals strengthened her tolerance levels until she felt completely hollow and cold. They transformed her into an obedient weapon-a machine that was altered to process orders and not emotions. And she knew the meaning of pain... Sometimes she would share it with men who deserved to die for their vile crimes against young women forced into subjugation—human trafficking and trained brainwashed operatives.

It was her world. Survival and life.

"The whole level is going to give out. Don't move..." Steve yelled breathlessly, his voice sounding harsh and a little shaky; a gruffer pitch and an urging need that hadn't been there before. The usual seriousness and commanding tone was replaced with a crackling breath of desperation. Rubbing his throat for a moment, he regarded her with intent blue eyes before crouching down and strapping his shield to his wrist.

For a moment, Natasha closed her eyes, breathing heavy. When she peeled her lids open she watched his face obscure into a deeply expression; his lips pressing into a taunt line of controlled rage as another drone stood in front of him.

"Put some pressure on that wound," he advised, blocking another slash with his shield. Despite of all the chaos around them, Steve was concerned for her life. "...it will stop the bleeding." he added, while tilting his head backwards as a violent swipe of metal cutting into air about an inch from his jaw, but Steve bent his arm and drove the shield through the legs and the robot crashed and deactivated in a matter of seconds.

"Steve..." she whispered, unable to function against the thralls of gouging and rending pain. She knew that death wouldn't claim her yet, she would find a way to run from the voids. A shudder of coldness rattled through her bones as she commanded herself to straighten on her feet; movement happened. She was limping closer to the extension of the platform. She stared down at the red collecting on her black nenoprane uniform and the world swirled and she halted her steps looking at Captain America—Steve—kneeling in front of scraps of the drones. "...Rogers?"

Wiping a smear of blood off his chin, Steve looked over his shoulder and stared at Natasha, trying to steady her balance against a railing. Her scarlet locks were tussled and her face pale from the amount of blood she had lost during the harrowing attack.

Unbeknownst to her pain, his intent azure eyes locked onto the exposed gash on her right side and he felt the tiniest surge of friction in his chest. He quickly advanced to the other side of the platform. His boots crushed over the dislocated limbs and pieces of torn power cores while fervently moving closer to her.

Natasha was jerking a lot, as though she were going into shock. Gritting his teeth, Steve pushed himself through the dangling pipes obstructing him from the Russian spy—his partner.

"Hold on, Natasha..." the Captain said, his voice echoing through the chamber and bounced into the deep pools of intense overflows of lapping water. He was frozen, the thought of losing her became a recoiling, sickening distress in his stomach. He faltered a step, almost allowing his damn heart to betray him as he spared a glance over the edge and looked at the water below. It was crushing him...the hesitation to dare himself to move and invade her space. Darkness hovered over Natasha's injured body, and she was staggering and shaking hand, trying to seize the support bar.

Uncertain if the damage was severe and if they would make it out alive. It was a risk. Putting his doubts aside, Steve focused on her wound. Her life was all that mattered to him. Feeling his muscles jar awake, he finally broke out of the gray abyss, and tore through the canopy of rusted and dented pipes. His gloved hand reached for her arm in that second when she fainted and nearly toppled to the edge.

Grimacing, Steve tossed his shield into another drone and then used his other hand to grip the railing; his pectorals scraped over the jagged steel of the support beam holding their bodies leveled over the water. After releasing a few heavy pants of breath, he collected his focus, kept his hand fastened over her Widow Bite gauntlet, having been unceremoniously damaged under his strength. The electronic device would be an easy fix for Stark. It was a just a weapon. "Natasha!" he veered his gaze down at her, feeling her hand slipping out of his grasp.

Blood trailed over his knuckles. His eyes watered and his jaw tensed against the surge of his enhance strength rippling in his veins. He wasn't letting her go.

Intense flashes of Bucky's marred hand dissolving in the flecks of snow reemerged from the recesses of his mind. A cold remainder of his guilt. Heart was thumping faster, and he groaned as a sharp throb ignited in his chest. Steve blinked those haunting images of his childhood friend falling into the endless white out of his mind. Barnes was gone. Dead. A memory. He couldn't save Bucky...He would save her.

"Natasha, wake up..." he urged in a harsh whisper. He shook his head vehemently. "I need both of your hands, beautiful—I can't lose you..." His voice blotted out into a desperate plea as the railing threatened to snap...The beam tipped and he was plowing through lingering pieces of steel and sliding down towards the edge of peril with her—inches from becoming swallowed by the dark fathoms of water. He swallowed, using his wits to formulate a strategy of getting them off the platform. He only had one chance to save her.

As seconds fled around them, Steve took a deep breath and summoned everything that had been welled in the layers of his heart and sealed his arms around her wrist. Heat merged with her fading temperature. It was both a physical and emotional merge of trust. "I'm not letting you go...Natasha Romanoff," he bellowed deeply with no intent of letting her slip away from his reach.

Listening to the water flowing below, Steve squeezed his eyes shut emotions were teetering and tears rolled down the chiseled lines of his jaw. The coldness of her skin triggered the immense need to save her which prompted him to increase all efforts in unleashing his sheer strength. Not just the super-soldier serum, but also the fiery determination of that kid from Brooklyn.

"Come on, Natasha..." he drew out a frantic breath, looking at her red hair clinging over her laden ivory features. He wasn't abandoning her... They would finish this mission together. Partners and maybe something more... In the moment of feeling his biceps overwhelming with infused heat, Steve lifted her body delicately up with a dance-like grace, he reacted to a faint audible groan escaping from her lips. It was a clear sign of assurance that she was rousing back to consciousness. His ragged breath lessened. "I've got you." He promised, his voice pitched with relief.

Carefully, he eased Natasha away from the edge and held her in a secured embrace. Her slender frame overlapped the broad expanse of his Kevlar embossed torso. Encircling his arm over her back, Steve somersaulted inches back from the platform. In that distressing moment, their bodies locked, his wet lips accidentally brushed over the crown of her head. Feeling the softness of his warm kiss created a sense of awareness and Natasha flitted her eyes open. She squinted against the shadows and looked into the blue fathoms of his glistening eyes as light glanced off his slackened skin and his fingers kneaded gentle strokes through her messy red locks that draped over her face. "Are you alright?" she heard him ask, his voice sounded distant and yet like a soothing grace that caressed over her scarred heart.

It was a spark of emotional strength.

In those small moments she wondered if trust was impermanent or something that could grow into a deeper commitment between partners. "Fine," she answered, her voice falling away. Stiffening her jaw, she encompassed her hand over her opened wound. Her fierce exterior was protesting against her fragile emotions. The Black Widow never surrendered to pain. "It's nothing that I can't handle, Rogers." she said, indignantly.

Steve sighed, undoing the chin strap of his helmet. His blonde hair was sodden with exhaustion and sweat. For a long moment he did his utmost not to look at her, his shifting eyes were focused on the remnants of the battle.

"Listen," he finally returned with a strain in his voice. She averted her eyes away from him, pretending to be absent for another lecture of Captain America's leadership skills. "You're my partner, Natasha. It's my job to watch your back. That's what being a partner means...We look out of each other."

She shot him a hardened glare. Undaunted, he continued, "I'm not trying to replace Agent Barton because I know you have a long shared history together, but I will risk my life to save yours, if it's what I need to do."

'I'm not worth it, Rogers," she gritted with bitterness, trying so hard not to look into his blue eyes. There was remorse building in her core. Emotions were scattered and the pain was reaching her heart. "I'm the type of person you stop. I'm not the good girl you save and carry away into the sunset. If you believe in that, Steve, then you're in the wrong business. In my world, good men become monsters."

Steve lowered his dismal eyes, and his brow furrowed with deep lines of understanding. Tears almost pricked in his eyes. Her words jabbed his heart like a knife, slicing and tearing through strings and piercing deeper. He had seen the ugliness of humanity-the brutal and cruel methods of the Red Skull and his malicious shadow Zola who had force captured soldiers to taste death by experiments and starvation. The shadowed images of war not documented by films or books. He remembered each face and dog tags that gleamed against the powerful streaks of blue energy.

He had walked into the shadows of death countless times; holding onto whatever hope remained to give him a sense of peace as he engaged into battle and witnessed young men become smoldering piles of ash and forgotten names on graves stones.

In the history books he read at the library, the text only explained the bigger events of the war, never the small sacrifices that brothers-in-arms made when they stepped into hell on earth. He had been a part of that world, guiding soldiers to freedom and protecting women and children from HYDRA's shadow. He had seen the monsters disguised in the flesh of men, however he also saw the honorable spirit in the smallest child who fought to stay alive when there was nothing left of his family or home. Bowing his head down, Steve felt the heat flaring in his chest. "Good men only become monsters if they lose themselves. I have fought beside monsters and heroes. Good always outweighs the bad."

"How do you never get lost?" she asked, fighting against the sting penetrating her side. Steve's lips slanted into an empty frown. "You've lost so much... Your best friend, the woman you loved…your whole world."

"I did get lost, Natasha," Steve whispered, his azure eyes shining with clear honestly. He worked his fingers over her wound, applying a caress of soothing heat against the exposed skin; trying to give her ease as he fell utterly into despondence. "There's a part of the man from the ice who found his way back. I'm still undecided on which road needs to be taken. I made a choice and joined the Avengers, and I do feel some purpose did return to me, but I'm not the same man who dreamed about having a family with the right partner. I'm a ninety-four war veteran trapped in a new time."

Natasha smirked a little, despite herself. "I can see you're searching for something else?" she asked with an invasive tone, leaning closer to him. The fullness of her paled lips curled into a vengeful and devious smirk. She wanted answers. Steve didn't pull away. He was still and looking deeply into her eyes-noticing the different mixtures of colors of blue and green and he was falling into an ocean of emptiness. Her hand roamed up his forehead, light and tempting with seductive movements of her fingers until she reached the rounded shape of his bicep. "You look like you're ready to break and confess, Rogers."

"Now is not the time," Steve breathed, low and deep—forcing his unsettled gaze away from her. Natasha was an efficient virtuoso at masking pain, but his stare pierced through her masks. She couldn't hide forever. It was almost as if she wanted to run away from the chance to drift out of the past; she had been unmade and tortured to be reborn as the world's deadliest assassin. Черная вдова—The Black Widow. She was a guarded person, for him to infiltrate her heart was a dare and a risk that could lead to his ruin. He had to exhaust all forms of wariness and take a leap of faith of connecting himself with her dark and unpredictable world...Her own personal Pandora's Box.

Taking a shaky breath, he lightly touched her tensed shoulder, warm and gentle as he tried meet her on equal side of a shattered mirror between them. He murmured, "Let's focus on getting you patched up, Agent Romanoff."

Natasha locked her gaze momentarily onto his shield. Indestructible metal. The red rings were faded with scratches of past battles, but it still gleamed in the darkness.

"Steve, do you...Do you ever feel pain?" she inquired, brokenly, gripping his arm with an imploring squeeze. He stilled and clenched his jaw obstinately. She knew that that question had gone too far deep, breaching his personal faults. Watching a shroud of turmoil spread across his chiseled features, she was peering beyond the semblance of regret and failure.

In those quiet moments when they met each other's stare, he didn't wear the mantle of Captain America. He was genuine and vulnerable. She'd never broke her stare away, her fingers moved over his solid chest and she felt his drumming heart thump against her palm.

Steve was letting her feel everything.

He pulled his lips into a despairing grimace, his face stung. He used all the measures of resilience to restrict himself from admitting the truth writhing in his chest. It was rational for him to respond to her question. Truth is what he had valued the most. He couldn't deny her. His eyes burned with guilt. "I do feel the burdens of pain and I try not to share them with others."

"That makes two of us, Rogers," Natasha solely admitted, patting her hand over his embossed star. "I don't feel the kind of pain that most people experience, but I do see it once the smoke clears and I never stop seeing those faces until I reach my endgame," she murmured with a smoky nonchalant tone, twisting her coy lips into a disarming expression. "I guess we both have something in common huh?" she played out with brush of snark.

Steve mirrored her with a faint renewed smile. "Yes, we do...more than you know, Natasha."

Sensing her resistance, Steve closed his eyes. He leaned into her, angling his head closer to her jaw, brandishing his lips against her skin with firm pressure of wet heat; caressing over the bruises with a kiss. He gave her an equal sense of credence. After all his experiences, trials and enduring high levels of great pain, it was hard for him to trust someone other than himself. And he wasn't running from the past, but the glimpses of an uncertain, lost and unknowing future without the Howling Commandos, Bucky and Peggy. They would soon all become ghosts that lurked in his regretful torturous memories. The guilt plunged deeper into his gut.

Natasha pulled away, defensively. "We should get back," she spoke in a reverent tone, converging all weakness into a thread that attached to the web of her guarded emotions. She dared herself to stare into his unblinking, pained gaze. She couldn't let him in. "Clint is waiting outside to assess my wounds. Standard protocol."

He nodded silently and grabbed his helmet. His eyes held a reserved look in them, dismissing her. "Agent Barton is a good man."

"I know," she uttered in a low, passive tone while managing to regain the complex semblance of the Black Widow. She lifted herself off the grate, holding onto the rail as she wrapped her arm around her waist. She brushed her loose strands of hair off her damp forehead and glared down at him with a dark glint in her calculating and keen green eyes; not giving him a small chance to speak or even touch her as his face froze into a solid expression. She didn't want him to protect her, even though she felt a little throb of foreign elation growing for another moment.

Then, Natasha looked down at her damaged gauntlet, trying to sabotage her second chance, a dream that all women would kill for, and she was pushing it aside -hoping to avoid another noxious confrontation with herself. "You disabled the wiring," she rasped, creasing her eyebrows. "...I guess it's time for a new upgrade."

"I saved your life, Natasha." Steve shot back, slowly easing himself into a pliant stance, the strap of his helmet was gripped in his clutch, and he suddenly became overwhelmed with anger and frustration. "For the most part you don't owe me anything." He discharged, but his voice trailed away into dismal cadence, as though he'd lost all reservations welling in him.

Sighing, the super-soldier moved closer to where she stood and placed his hand firmly on her shoulder, his eyes collected the shadows and his fingers flexed over the leather with friction. "A debt is a payment made when mistakes hold you down…" he breathed, holding her gaze. "Your life is holds great value, but I think because I consider you as my friend...I have broken that contract that you've made between us."

Natasha took a moment and contemplated on that. True and unnerving. Her eyes narrowed with realization. "My life was taken from me," she returned, words bitter. "If it was me that was left with the choice to save you...I won't trust myself to do it." He didn't reply. She shook her head, watching his blue eyes fix on the darkness looming behind her.

"I wasn't built to save people," she added in resentment, her voice bleached of life. Her face became vacant. Numbness crawled over her exposed wound. "I follow orders and do what needs to be done for the mission. I get the job done even if means having blood on my hands."

"If that's how you live, then why did you become an Avenger?" he asked, with an empathetic voice. She shot him a hard glare which felt like it made his skull split open. "You say that saving lives isn't a part of who you are, but I've seen you risk everything back in Manhattan. If you truly believe that you're not a good person then why wear a symbol on your shoulders that holds and pledges to protect the world from the monsters you try to run from, Natasha?"

"You can't judge me, Rogers, you don't know what it's like to feel nothing. To become unmade and never look into your reflection because you're afraid of what might be staring back at you," she admitted, crossing her arms and trying to remain poised and collective. Tough as nails. Steve was a symbol of everything she had been programmed to fight against...a stalwart guardian and sentinel of justice and liberty.

Captain America was a righteous and decisive leader who'd inspired young men to never give up the fight; to never surrender. His compassion towards humanity was his only real weakness and one HYDRA had taken advantage of in those dark times. It was also his greatest strength. She would never be like him. "I am not a foot soldier...I don't make tough choices and lay down my life for someone else. Stop forcing yourself to believe that I'm like Fury's go-to gal."

He didn't respond at first. Then he leaned in forward, his nose inadvertently parallel with hers. Their foreheads practically touched. Drenched hair was breadth the distance of their faces. Barely a breath away to form a diamond. Despite the surge of impulse, he didn't move away. Neither did she. He'd lost all focus on the world around him, breath hitched as air locked into his chest. "Don't let your mistakes define who you are, Natasha," he said simply, his eyes scanning over her tainted uniform.

Her eyes flashed dangerously, like red lightning slicing through dark cloud cover of an unpredictable storm. "You make it sound easy." she gritted, with a sort of tortured breath. "Nothing will define me, Rogers."

His hand grasped her wrist, pulling her unexpectedly close to him. She didn't run. This was undeniable trust between them. His heart sped against wild currents of blood rushing through his veins and flush of heat seared his muscles, daring and enthralling.  _Natasha._  Her name echoed in his soul as he was waking up after months of discovering a new life and reconnecting with the world-he never felt so much alive and driven by tangible fire that scorched his bones. He wanted to tell her.  _You're the only who I can trust._

With that, his long and rough fingers lightly caressed underneath the smoothness her jaw and neck. She was waiting to feel his lips melt against her mouth, the unfurling desire was liquid fire in her veins. His broad jaw grazed over her cheek and the heat of his breath fastened over blemished skin. They were close. Inches from joining into a heady, wet and deep kiss.

Blood mixed with fire. He was falling hesitant again. The soldier inside him pulsed a warning to his brain, she was a distraction. He belonged to Peggy. _His best girl._

Reasoning with his heart, Steve coaxed his tentative lips against her stiff cheek sliding his arm between the railing and her back, he whispered softly, "I believe in you, Nat, and one day you will find your true self again in another reflection."

She felt his lips detach from her skin and she stared into his clear azure irises, there were deep and tangled hints of her mirrored in his trusting gaze. She didn't look away.

* * *

.

 


	7. Chapter 7

****   


**Questions and Answers**

* * *

Natasha felt the surges of liquid fire consuming in her veins. Pain thrummed behind her pensive teal-green eyes. Oddly enough, despite her unconquered spirit, she felt content against the wavering heat of the commanding, intimating, virtuous presence of Captain America. Regathering her collective demeanor, Natasha steered her pensive teal-green eyes at the cock pit, looking out the protective windows: the fading afternoon sky became a canvas of massive entanglements of wedged shaped and ominous clouds. Low masses of horizontal cover obscured over the restless Atlantic waters that reflected against the metallic exterior of the QuinJet dipping low against the tinted clusters of transparent azure.

She wasn't raveled up in her grievances and nightmares of the Red Room; everything felt impermanent and unstable. She didn't trust the monster raving in her veins. The constant grinding of her soul each time she dared to look back into the infinite void and stare down at the dark reflection of ballerina trapped beyond shattered glass.

Shifting her lithe form against the hard seat, she crossed her arms, protective over the red shirt underneath her black leather jacket: breathing in the encroaching scent of masculine sweat wavering off Steve's glazed, hot skin. It was a distraction: childish, uncharacteristic and pathetic. For a moment, her intense teal eyes stared intently at the super-soldier. She couldn't look away.

Cursing Russian under her breath, Natasha stared entranced and blinked the feverish haze out of her eyes; intently gazing at the youthful and ample muscles of his vigorous biceps flexing as laving afternoon light caressing over the definition and rounded shape of his solid arms. He wasn't protected by his dark navy and silver embossed patterned material of his stealth-strike suit. In was hard to fathom, a ageless soldier dressed in modern clothing: a plain muted red shirt that didn't go justice of hiding the broad expanse of his chest pectorals and the perfect" V" outline of his hips. This was going to get deadly; she felt a storm arising in her veins. He was disarmed. She was sitting across from him, only a few  _unbearable_  inches.

Underlining the details that became captured in her fixed stare-he looked different without the semblance and the emblem of liberty. His blonde hair was messy and unkempt, and there still visible smears of dried blood from a gash embedded in his chiseled jaw, but his azure eyes were crystallized as light refracted in his pupils. There was a hint of five o'clock shadow over the arch of his soft lips. His boyish and cut-stone features were intimating and... Unnerving. His eyes obscured for momentary blink as he brought the water close to his mouth, draining, and feeling the cold relief drop aimlessly down his smooth neck, chest and leaving a dampened stain on the red fabric.  _Disengage. Don't look at him._

Something was drilling bone-deep into her core, although Natasha tried to fight against the irrefutable truth of the clustering urges compromising her mind; she couldn't erase the violability and the sense of denial. There was resistance against her refined desensitization arising in her veins. For a moment, she blocked out everything around her, feeling the heat torrents of guilt ravage in her veins. She was trained and enhanced to show no aspects of empathy, subjectivity and concern to another life that hung in a balance.

Natasha couldn't elude herself from the unbidden and harrowing sense of dread and betrayal. The demons of the Red Room: Karpov and Lukin molded and dehumanized her to withstand the effects of emotional attachments. During her years of being controlled by the will of those monsters, she became immune to the hollowness and coldness that penetrated deeper into her bones.

With disruptions of her tangled mind, Natasha underwent different levels of torture, enduring physical and emotional scarring and was unmade endorse harsh interrogation tactics without the errors of primary emotions. They stripped her down and transformed her into a lethal and vacant weapon-no heart and soul. She no longer had existence or mortal understanding.

There were just drops of blood to be shed and devices to utilize when following the orders of her handlers-the perfect assassin, combatant and covert operative infiltrator of governmental clandestine operations.

After she received a second chance with S.H.I.E.L.D, her conditioning that diminished the key features of what it meant to be human " _identity and community"_  and the mechanistic dehumanization-cold, rigid, interchangeable, lacking agency of the Black Widow had been tampered with cognitive flexibility, warmth (compassion), only a thread of it. Emotion became a sense. Guilt, attachment and trust were fundamental devices she regained throughout the years of having a partner. Her and Agent Barton developed a structured relationship during their recon missions, and they became close- _close_  enough that when Loki had Clint trapped under the mind spell, she felt a gnawing discomfort pushing her to brink of shedding tears even though she had deemed herself to be a heartless shell, she couldn't ignore that form of pain.

She refused to ignore the brimming emotions, and summoned the fierce coiling nature of the Black Widow, she steered her gaze onto his alloy shield prompted against his leather boots. She caught him staring at her, with a haunted, disturbed look in his hardened blue eyes. "Do you always carry trash can lid with you every time you leave your apartment?" she asked, with a bite of acid in her malevolent voice.

The question seemed to have taken him aback, and he clenched his jaw. He watched her, transfixed as her lips curved into an impish smirk, sexy and approachable. To her coy surprise, the pliant soldier didn't make an effort to budge, his guarded eyes dipped at the bottle of water clasped in his hand. Even though, they were entering their second month of recon; he still had no idea how much she was taking interest in him. It was raw and alarming. They were barely friends-just partners-nothing was concrete with them. No stability or hint of a future commitment. He didn't force anything onto her; they were teetering closer to the razor's edge, almost to the brink of entering a moment of dangerous tension. "No," he uttered, simply, but she clearly knew his serious tone was a full-blown cover up to mask his pain. "Not all the time."

After yet another awkward moment of silence, Natasha parted her lips; she released a daring breath, and leveled with his intense stare. His lips faltered into a broken expression, and he closed his eyes, breathing, tilting his head back. "Is that all you have left of the past..." Her voice caught in her throat, smirking beguilingly at him."I mean other than your old stars and stripes uniform?"

"I have other things," he echoed back, narrowing his eyes slightly at his shield, building up utmost of reserves in his defense. "My shield is an offensive weapon. I don't condone death like some of your friends..." There was ire in his voice suggesting that he was uncomfortable with her topic of casual conversation, especially with a defected Soviet assassin who murdered people as a daily living. He would never cross that line. He always found another way to prevent blood staining his hands. Sighting out a heated breath, he added, "I don't like killing people with bullets and knives. That's really not my style."

"Well, in this risky business, a gun can become your best friend when all lines of defense are crossed, Rogers." she responded, tracing her fingers over a thigh holster.

He shot a hardened glare her way, intense, and his voice grew tight with a paramount declaration against her views on survival. "It doesn't matter what weapon you choose for battle, what matters in the choice to either pull the trigger or stand down to reason. A soldier always holds a life in his hands and when you have that power and feel unstoppable it hits home when decisions become emotions."

She gritted her teeth, feeling a phantom impact of noxious regret seizing in her chest. "May I remind you that you don't know me, Captain Rogers..." She spoke with low brush of spite in her voice, ebbing at the truth gleaming in his light eyes. Indebted. She owed him nothing. He wasn't Clint. He didn't know how the methods of living under a shadow of gun and running from olden demons. She was a captive to a mindless delusion of control and thoughtless actions of lethal procession.

He was Captain America...The protector and avenger of liberty, hope and innocence. The good -Brooklyn kid- without a bad bone in his perfected body.

Empowering fire of resentment was spiking in her veins. Drawing out slow and repetitive breaths, Natasha regained control of her emotions, and stared back into his understanding eyes while feeling her protesting knuckles crack against skin. "You don't know what I'm capable of without using emotions. I pull the trigger because when I woke up from the nightmare of living in hell, a gun was in my hand and body was on the floor."

"Sorry, I didn't know," he replied after a long and unsteady pause. "Do you still feel those urges?" Natasha's face morphed into a cold demeanor of malice. Steve halted in his words, as his lax expression became taunt, almost offering up a grimace. "Okay, I'll admit maybe that wasn't the best question to ask you..." His amending voice trailed off as he fixed his eyes on the S.H.I.E.L.D pilot adjusting the controls. "Do you want to talk about something else?"

She shrugged, acting indifferent to his question. "Fine,"" she bit out, wanting to avert her eyes from him. "Anything on your mind or are we playing another guessing game?"

Steve looked at her like she had delivered a killing stroke into his chest. He felt stabbing ache of regret punctured a hole through his heart, each breath was painful. Peggy, he wanted to go back their time, finding her waiting in front of the Stork Club, red velvet dress and red beautiful lips...His favorite Western color : a symbol of strength, passion, devotion, courage and determination.

Red had always been an intense color that an artist used to create something vibrant and everlasting on a canvas. He was born color blind from the birth effects of his damaged and small measured heart.

Over the struggles of living with constant fevers and low immune system; the scrawny and wheezing Brooklyn kid had discovered that strength was without bounds. And when he was injected with the enhanced serum, each ounce merging in his veins granted him heighten senses including perfect sight-when he emerged out of the chamber his eyes where opened to the brand new world of colors around him-Peggy's deep cordovan lips was the first color that lulled him out the darkness- roses and blood- filled with the fires of defiance. He always felt strong when he used to look into her rich brown eyes and beautiful smile.  _Masterpiece._  He would forever see those different combinations of red.

Listening to the air currents whooshing against the jet outside, Steve opened his eyes, splotches of ink coated his vision for a second, until a glimpse of a sea fire became captured in his stern gaze; it was Natasha's scarlet curls -a cascade of different shades of red. She shot him a glance of ire on him, with a puzzled expression plastered over her blemished ivory face. Clearing his throat, he broke the walls of tension between them. "What's your favorite color?" he asked in a curious whisper, his eyes changeless. "Unless you don't have done, Natasha?"

She clenched her jaw, releasing a deep breath. "I like black, since it's not a color." Steve grinned a little at her. "What?" she huffed, stiffened posture uncomfortably.

Steve felt a playful smirk pull over his lips, as snark was hold back in a laugh that escaped from his throat. He seemed amused. "Black is all the colors combined. It's a really shade that is used to create shadows on a canvas," he explained simply, taking another swig of water. He was trudging deeper into her world. "I'm guessing that is the color you wear the most when you're not in uniform?"

Natasha smirked a little at that. "It makes me feel powerful." She empathized on her defense, ruefully, beating him at his own game." Plus it goes very well with blood..Um..I mean red. "

She pressed her lips into a thinned edgy line, weaving out from information out of him. She looked at him, resonating and trying to disconnect with her betraying emotions. "Anyways," she said in a dry voice, pinning her teal eyes on his youthful face. "I know that your favorite color is blue...Since it's the prime color of your spangled uniform."

He looked at her, eyes creasing with etches of pain. "Red." He blew out a short breath."It's always been the color that struck with me during the war. Not just the blood from the fallen soldiers, but also the color of a woman's was hope that brought me back when I drifted further into the fray. It's something that will never change."

Everything seemed to pause as he looked back at her curls of scarlet. Time constricted. He hitched out a sigh, and for a silence moment, that one torturous and vivid image of a disappointed Peggy Carter standing under the dim lights of the Stork Club invaded and cut deep into the recesses of his mind.

He dipped his head low, almost surrendering to the abyss of grief and he clenched his fingers furiously into a tight fist against his knee. His muscled turned rigid and chest locked with heavy torrents of vehemence. "I also like blue..." he spoke with harshness in his tone. "It's not because I wear the colors of America on my uniform."

She pulled her lips into a shadowy grin, amused at his persistence, of their getting to know each other game. "Why did you choose to become Captain America...?" Her lips curled into sly grin, perceiving to be interested with his explanation. "I mean why did you become the Spangled Man with the Plan?"

Steve leaned back minutely, with a quirking smirk tugging on the smooth edges of his lips. "You had to ask?" he groaned in light spasms of repressed breaths, stiffening his broad jaw, and searching in the reserves of his distant and unfurled recollections. It seemed nauseating to reveal at first, mostly because it was her. Heaving out a long breath, and slid his fingers through his bedraggled and spiked hair and looked steadily into her eyes, even his piercing stare at her. "I guess it started when I was tricked into signing a contact which I thought was something admiral for my country...Then after the costume and hooded mask...I learned the hard truth and became America's show stopping stage boy-a dancing monkey who smiled and kissed beautiful dames for good old American press..." he laughed breathy. "Captain America the star spangled patriot of war bonds."

"So you were a stage boy?" she jabbed back. "A sideshow attraction for people to throw fruit at if you went off key?"

He frowned in a disquisition; his chiseled face went lax as he tried to bury those memories. His stomach was lurching with unsettlement. "Yeah, it wasn't fun, but that's how I got myself on the battlefield and did something that I was meant to do while using that stage name and becoming a symbol of freedom for all those young men who needed to be reminded that the fight was not over." His eyes shone with unyielding defiance and surges of power. Stark blue ripped through the cast of shadow and grew intense-lightning-he held that scorching energy in his firm gaze. Natasha saw a look of unbidden trust, something that seemed unnatural to her. It was a form complete and undeniable trust that wasn't forged out of blood or a long lasting contract between two wayward and lethal assassins.

She was staring into the endearing and fearless eyes and soul beyond the mantle of Captain America.

_It's not real._

"What I'm trying to say is that Captain America can be anyone who wants to take a stand against the bullies." his breath was shaky, but soft. "Yes. I did choose that name, but I did it for people to embrace hope when is became lessened. All I wanted to do since I was a kid was to prove that even the little guys can become strong when all fear chases after you." Steve narrowed his dismal eyes and inhaled through his nostrils. "I fight so that people can have a chance to live a good life."

Natasha scoffed, mockingly. "A good life..." She repeated, biting on her lip, feeling her whole body ache with a gut-wrenching hollow emptiness inside her. She twisted her lips into a faint grimace, refusing to listen to the measures of nobility curling in his smooth tone. She had never lived. Everything was impermanent—a cruel method of living to use when the demons threatened to haunt her in those waking moments of vulnerability. For years of being trapped in the ranks of Karpov's natural selection program which held the key factors of creating the perfect assassin: performance, mastery, obedience and acceptance.

The carnal handlers of Department X had taken everything from her after the graduation ritual-stripped her down and wiped her clean from any imperfections. She received different levels of pain from the hellish blights of the KBG. She survived by staying awake when others went to sleep. Running and running. Lying. And then she found her way out, and changed her name—erased the sins of her past and rectified with certain loose ends.

She was the Black Widow: the ruthless and cunning spider who ensnared her prey into the weaves of manipulation. After she used them and drained them dry from information, she left her bite -a numbing sting of malice as reminder that lethal poison flowed in her veins.

'What if there is no such thing as living in freedom?" she asked, a cold burn of dread raked against the scarred threads of her heart. "We'll be fighting for the rest of our lives...Battling the past and regrets of the experiences we made ourselves fall into when it all started with a shot in the dark."

Steve regarded with her with tender and passive blue eyes. His baritone grew laden with understanding.  _Serious_. "Who do you fight for, Natasha?"

"It's hard to fight for someone when you spend your life fighting to live another day," Natasha replied with a collective, nonchalant voice, never removing her transfixed gaze from his laden face. "You can only see the things that people want you to see, Rogers." There was an edge in her tone, a drop of embroiled venom. Her coy demeanor became overtaken by the brim of vacant obscurity with the absence of sentiment. "Everyone has a darker negative in their reflection...Some are just darker than others."

Steve stiffened his lips, he didn't respond to her.. His chiseled face grew tensed and driven as he straightened to his towering height, and leveled his clear and intense blue eyes onto her, taking a moment to capture her flawless beauty and straggly red locks, that shadowed over her cunning teal eyes, all the uncertainty bled away. His breath grew in a feverish pitch as he moved closer and blocked her. She didn't fight move, and lowered her head in disquiet expression. He slanted his lips into a ghost of a smile, reaching to flex his fingers over her tensed shoulder. A pulse of heat merged with her exposed skin. No tremors of hesitance. Utter assurance of slow building delusions of a partnership. "Natasha," he breathed calmly, she glared up at him. "I don't know much about your past, but I'm a good listener. When you're ready I'll be here ready to listen."

Feeling somewhat disturbed by his forwardness, Natasha held his stare, anger was still loitered in her veins. She felt dead. Unimportant. "Believe me, my past is not for a bedtime story to calm down the Hulk, Rogers." her tone dipped into something dark and bitter as she continued, "It's a damned nightmare."

He didn't implore her to offer those truths to him. "We've both dealt with loss an pain, Natasha." he said quietly, easing himself next to her. "It doesn't mean we should let past control our lives."

"This is what I am now, and you'll never know what kind of person I was before I traded up my sins." Natasha said, feeling the weight of guilt constricting over her chest. She diverted her gaze, skyward and curled her fingers into fist. A vivid gossamer web of memories of the Red Room flashed in her mind; she was damaged, efficient and betrayed. The mark of her enslavement and subjection was branded further into the every fiber in her bones. "My past is my life..."

"If you keeping living with regret you'll never live at all," Steve interrupted, he tore his gaze from her and stared absently at his shield, affixed at the faded red paint.

For a few short moments, he felt the rushes of heat dissolving in his muscles; discordant energy was starting to clot the the jet, air was getting thinner each breath that filled his lungs. He sighed. "I'm sorry," he said, feeling resentment pent in his heart. He didn't want the sickness of heartache of losing Peggy to consume him; allowing small chances and risks to become swallowed by his storms of guilt whirling in his gut. He deserved to experience happiness and share the dream of having a family with a beautiful dame. Regardless, he was a soldier-on the inside out-the mission always became priority. He had to get another grip on his choices and block out all distractions.

After taking a deep breath, Steve leveled his unvarying blue eyes on her wrist. He noticed remnants of faded scarring of chain links from a handcuff. More intervening silence created barriers around them. "Is that a part of past?" he inquired eventually, his voice thick with a pitch of sentiment. When his baritone voice cut into the air, Natasha shifted rigidly against the wall, taking her hand and hiding into a pocket of her jacket. Glacial stares were shot his way, and he didn't seem undaunted by the sudden change in her unpredictable countenance. And he knew that it wasn't small talk anymore...Something deeper and serious.

He sealed his lips into a taunt line slightly. "Look, if we're doing a lot of recon together, we need to start trusting each other, Natasha. I have no intention of asking details about her childhood in Russia, but you need to know that I don't trust a person with a dark side and know how to hide it well." he sighed again. He glared at directly her for an interminable moment, focusing his irises of azure inside the swirling of vortexes devouring the light in her enticing grayish eyes. She was mirroring his concerning gaze. Her eyes were so guarded and intense. To hollow, that he felt her coldness slice into his soul. He stood his ground against her. No resistance was held in his calm demeanor "I think there is something more to you...I've seen it out in the field. You have the capacity to save people...Just like you did when Agent Barton was under the influence of Loki's power."

"Stop thinking that I'm a good girl...I've killed innocent schoolgirls." she admitted, harshly. She tried to resist the anguished and ire rising in her crackling voice, feeling the scars embedded in the pale skin of her thinned wrist burn at the revisiting thoughts of the dark memories of being ordered to dislocate neck bones of her old school mates in front of her ruthless and cold- eyed ballet instructors.

_You will never fail._

Natasha steered herself away from the delusions, swore that she would never lay a hand on another defenseless girl. She wasn't free from the threads raveling around her, the red haze of the lights that encased her bones when she was locked into a chamber and left to fight her demons alone in isolation.

It was her life, her dysfunctional and inhumane world. Lives became missions and split blood of innocence was a symbol of succession.

"I don't save people. That's not what Black Widow does, she kills without emotion." Her monotone voice gained more of a raw edge...Holding a touch of poison against the tip of her tongue. As her heart steeped into a fathomless crescendo as she unclasped her lips and resettled her stare on her gun hostler. Sourness of breath escaped from her mouth. Natasha traced her finger over the steel of the pistol. It was tempting to hold. The gun was her power to control any situation, suddenly she found herself reaching an impasse, feeling emotions seep into the marrow of her bones as she curled her fingers over the barrel and she stopped her unconscious assault. "It's efficient to hold nothing back...No show no weakness or dreams. I just feel coldness because I'm a monster...I've hurt a lot of my friends and if you get close I will hurt you just like I did to them."

Steve felt discontentment rumbling in his chest, "You're not going to hurt me, Natasha," he soothed his voice entirely calm and honest against her warning. He had seen the back roads of desolated youths in uniform and the experience his own measures of pain through loss and failure. Bucky was a ghost every time he stared at a passing train or looked up a streaks of azure and in a gray winter sky. Those were painful reminders of buried deep in him. Sometimes, in the thick of battle, he would use those memories as a strength to push his limits and carry through the mission.

Even though, Bucky's death was his fault. He would own that like he owned the broken promise he made with Peggy seventy years when their world and dreams of sharing a life together ended through a choice of sacrifice. "I know what it feels like to have pain and not be able to share it someone." It was brutal and unwavering confession, those soulful words racked against his ribs. "I guess that's the price of being who I am...Captain America. Everyone told me that it was a risk and that I would experience a lot of pain like all soldiers do on the front lines. I never imagined it to become so bone-deep and permanent."

Natasha looked at him, differently. She searched in his unyielding gaze and found the corruptible truth: Steve wasn't  _tough as nails_  like her. He was real, honest and pure. He had weaknesses, guilt and shattered dreams. Mostly, he was human-flesh and blood- he was able to bled and break. Staring into his sincere blues, all the clusters of icy remorse and carnal urges did not avail her.

She felt icky, flows of blood was churning and heat twisting in her veins. She wanted to protest, and go beyond protocol and devour with her relentless hunger and make him submit to her desires.  _Ridiculous._ He was corrupting her, imploring and enticing her to follow his lead of the dance their marred souls were aligned to follow into a trusting pace. She had to diminish that blissful music vibrating against her heartstrings.

Anger and disgust was pulsing in her veins. He was breaking her stone hard surface; she couldn't give into emotions-feelings- for him. They were not dance partners. "Why do you trust me?" she asked, in low and dragged out voice. She looked into his evened gaze. It was disconcerting. "I'm not the person who deserves you has a partner. Fury chose the wrong girl to watch your back, Rogers," she responded flatly.

"It wasn't Fury who signed you as my partner." Steve admitted in a shallow breath. "I requested you." She furrowed her eyebrows into creases of puzzlement. "You prove to me back in New York that you're a fighter and know how to make the tough choices without breaking into judgments of emotion. I know you're not a soldier, but you're something, Natasha Romanoff." Holding her stare as if he was investing all his time with her, Steve crouched down onto the grate surrounding the hard carbon wall seats, and then he took her resisting hand into his with a gentle squeeze of sheer and unbreakable acceptance. "There is no one else I rather have to watch my back in the line of fire."

"Wait," Natasha gasped, her voice cracked. She felt the cacophony of detachment shattered her programming; her face went instantly stoic and she regarded him with her teal eyes, allowing the intermixing of colors to gleam with troublesome expression. It seemed unnaturally impossible. He was America's avenging champion-the good and vigilant soldier of heart and indomitable will, and she was a stone-cold murderess. They were too  _different_. Light and darkness. Heaven and Hell. "Ask yourself this, Rogers, would you trust me after everything was spoken between us to put your life in my hands?" she asked, breathlessly.

"Natasha," Steve sighed heavy and laden, his fingers rubbed soothingly over her knuckles. He tried to keep his lips into a neutral line, looking at her scarlet curls capture a caress of light streaming above them from the window. She was beautiful and angelic all at once. He couldn't let go of the thought to claim her lips and prove to her that she wasn't a monster remade to be unloved.

She was something far greater. When he stared into the deepness of her eyes, he saw flecks of light that weren't there before and in those moments everything jolted inside of him. He was entrapped in the weaves of the Black Widow, and his heart ceased to beat as all functions of his body froze. He became inadvertently close to her proximity, a breath away from sealing her pink glossed lips into impacting kiss. Unbeknownst to her concealed emotions, he still felt like everything had seemed so close and yet so unknown with her.

Braving himself, and breaking out the daze of solace, Steve patiently wrapped her lithe body into the solid embrace of his arms, lifting her off the seat and dipped his head low. The fullness of soft lips shadowed wet heat over the edge of her dormant lips. "I'm holding you right now and you're not letting go." A hint of a tentative smile crafted over his etched features and he felt her breathe with even rhythm.

"We're trusting each other," he whispered, and then closed his eyes, drifting and forgetting about the pain, he tilted his head closer, brushed the smooth arch of her lips with coiling heat before he kissed her; parting her lips and plunging deep into her mouth as she groaned and started to feel relief melting back into her body—the throes of olden pain dissolved in the feverish swell of his plush lips joining against hers. Releasing everything into him, Natasha's eyes fell shut and she became a captive frozen in time with him.


	8. Chapter 8

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**{What I Can't Lose...}**

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The piercing realization of being compromised seized Natasha's guarded heart. She couldn't turn away and search for an escape in the shadows—not this time. She felt ripples of detectable emotions surging in her heated veins; a constant eruption of uncertainty. She couldn't understand why she froze in that moment when he needed her most to push him out of the line of fire. Instead, she trusted their righteous team leader, Captain America—Fury's super weapon. He was the front line of defense against HYDRA, doing the grunt work in recon missions while Fury's agents hacked into ghost files through data-mining. Steve was as a distraction—a deceived pawn—to clear a path for SHIELD without getting their hands dirty.

A part of her respected the Captain's hellbent resilience as an admirable quality in the field. He was obedient to the four virtues and ethical morals; Steve was pure and untainted by the horrors that crossed the weaves of her programmed mind. Some would say he was an angel who had been dragged into an icy hell of betrayal, depravity and lust for power. In other words, his valiant heart didn't belong in her world entrenched by darkness and blood. He wasn't immune to merciless punishment, or the feeling of guilty scars buried deep into his skin. He was a super-soldier, an efficient tactician and a highly skilled fighter who has mastered his craft and moral discipline. But like all good men, America's patron defender had a weakness: idealism and compassion in a world that had lost touch with the values he exhibited.

He wasn't prepared to play the game. Instead of letting the hostages fend for themselves, he barreled into the warehouse and became a shield for people who didn't deserve to live while Clint took the hit.

She didn't expect pain to claim her partner. Not Clint—her best friend—her family.

Conflicted by the torrents of remorse, Natasha was haunted by the real promise she had made to Laura Barton that she would never allow anything happen to Clint under her watch. She stared at the window; zoning in on intense flickers of lightning as each strike of energy pierced through the encroaching mass of ominous clouds; they held reflections of twilight colors of muted pink and russet from the fading sunset. Another unpredictable, raving storm was approaching.

She could sense the winds of change; hot and cold intermixed into the calm air. It was a silent caution not to chase after the storm. The tantalizing moments of waiting to be summoned to Clint's side were crushed against her; making her feel unsteady on her combat boots—searching for answers. She needed to know that Clint was safe and that he would be able to return back to his farm. She owed the archer a debt—a life for a life. Sinking back into the darkness and recalling her icy resolve, Natasha leaned her lithe and tensed body against the close door. She tilted her head back and allowed her mussed scarlet locks to drape her pale features in disarray as she recollected herself.

Finally, the lethal assassin summoned her reserves of strength, poised on her feet, and she strode silently passed the whitewash walls; eluding the patient waiting lounge like a displaced specter. The whole area reeked of lemon fresh disinfectant and wavered a pungent stench of life and death at her nostrils. The corridor was blanketed with doubt, failure and pain; in all the spaces between her and the hallway—leading to the door of Clint's recovery room.

Natasha paused in mid-stride, her stomach clenched and her teal eyes darkened. She drew up a frustrated breath and casually entered the room with the utmost of assurance that Clint was a survivor—hardcore and stubborn. Natasha gripped onto her unyielding defiance, inching closer to the elevated bed. He was reclined comfortably and he seemed to have a tangled mess of wires and plastic tubes sprouting from his limbs, attached to EKG machines and IV drip bags inches from his bedside. His finger was pegged to track eruptions in his pulse and he had been stripped down until his chiseled chest was bare. Natasha's eyes fell onto her partner. She could feel shock and anger surging in her veins.

"Hey, you look rough Clint," she scoffed, bringing herself closer to his side; fire melding with ice as she stroked her fingers along the medical tape fastened against the IV tube in his vein. "...the nurses did a poor job with your bandages..."

She mentally assess his visible wounds. His chiseled torso was littered with purple tinged bruises, a strip of white gauze was wrapped over his right arm, and under his nose was remnants of dried blood. The report that she had managed to swipe revealed that he had a minor fracture in his shoulder, lost an exceeding amount of blood and he was suffering three cracked ribs. Nonetheless, the stealthy Avenger was breathing contently even though he looked battered and utterly disheveled. It was widely debatable if he would endure another attack of pain.

"Well, at least you're stable enough to return back to your safe house in a few days..." She slanted her lips into a coy smirk, leveling her eyes filled with wetness onto his ashen face. She brought her hand to his bare shoulder and squeezed the firm muscle reassuringly, despite that her heart felt gutted out. They both had to heal. She'd promise his wife that he would come back home—safe and strong enough to lift his little girl in his arms. "You did good out there...I should've have been more—"

"Tasha," Clint returned evenly, his voice strained from exhaustion. He fluttered his eyelids open as the sunlight laved across his lax features and pierced into his gray irises. He inclined his head off the pillow; unsealed his chapped lips and tried his utmost to force up words as the heaviness of the morphine clogged in his throat. Once his vision adjusted to the dim light, he settled his bleary stare at her. "I didn't know that you cared..." he lightly teased, beaming at Natasha like he was on a whiskey high. 'At least he isn't in pain,' she thought with measure of relief.

Still, Natasha refused to openly respond to his snarky wakefulness. She was too absorbed in her guilt.

"Hey, don't blame yourself for anything...I only have my arrows...It was inevitable for this to happen. I'm luckily it's just a fracture and not like the injury Trickshot gave me as a kid," he managed to pull his lips into a smile, emitting a raspy chuckle before looking into her dismal eyes. He could vaguely sense that Natasha was about to disarm herself—allowing the cunning, ruthless and utterly unbreakable nature of the Black Widow—the powerful fighting machine of the KGB—to shatter because he was stuck in a hospital bed. Softly, he secured his fingers over her leather sleeve and watched her swallow back tears. "Don't do this to yourself, Nat...My life isn't your responsibility."

Natasha backed away from the bed, her posture tensed as he folded her arms over her chest, intently looking down at the gauze swathed over his wound. Her expression vacant, "I owe you, remember?" she reminded him, coldness searing in her lungs. Clint looked at her with tender leaky eye, that still twinkled over the gloss of pain when he centered his gaze on her. "Don't look at me like that, Clint," she dismissed, bitterness resided in her heart as she tried to ease down the feverish venom gushing in her veins. She quickly tore her eyes away and stared at the lightning dancing across the sky.

She seemed distant and utterly disturbed by the predictable situation. Regardless, the pledge they made back when she had no soul haunted her, just like the raging urge to kill. He saved her from the dark end of her fate, gave her a chance to redeem her sins, to have a purpose and feel human again. "Your life is my debt, we're not on equal terms until I save you, and I will next time."

Clint listened to the bitter snarl emitting from her sour lips. His eyelids dropped and he stared at her as the haze of exhaustion pulled him back. He was disconnecting from the world, trying to open his eyes and steadily focus on her but he didn't have the energy to stay awake. Soft breaths ghosted from his twitching lips, and the pain dissolved as his pulse evened with his normal heart rate. But he detected the storm clashing inside her, the cold fury of the Black Widow aching to become released and unleash her lethal bite on the man who didn't have her partner's back. "Nat, don't blame Steve. He did what was right for the mission," he breathed, struggling to get into a comfortable position. Gritting his teeth, he managed to stare into her intense and obscured eyes. "I would have done the same."

"Steve is not ready to face the dark places of this world like we do. He has a shield and we have guns." Natasha stiffened her jaw into a tight clench of disapproval. "He follows his heart too often instead of his head, and that is a weakness our enemies will use to bring him down." She reached out a hand to grab a cup of apple juice at the table and broke the seal off; handing the drink to him. "We don't save our enemies..." She feigned harshly, grabbing another juice and watched him take a few sips while cold resentment was evident in her gaze. "We usually let them burn."

"Cap's a good man, Nat," Clint returned with an evened breath, his lips curved into a wry grin. "I'm glad we have super-soldier on our team. Whether you like it or not, Steve's our big gun and he does things that we can't. So before you accuse him of being a liability, take a good look at him and then you'll see the truth."

"Careful, Barton," Natasha shot back in a husky warning with her infuriated glare set onto him. Instinctively, her poised fingers traced over the hostler belt strapped along the jutting curve of her hip. She felt the tightness of a rueful smirk tug against her lips.

A fleeting taunt of playfulness subsided; Natasha gathered up her confidence and swayed a fraction of an inch closer to the bed where she wanted to take the opportune moment to spill out her confessions. To hold his hand eventually and tell him that she was glad he was recovering from the attack and they were going to have another mission together. She couldn't expose those emotions even though the prompting inched under her skin. What came out was the indignant tone of the guarded Soviet operative. "Remember that I'm armed and very dangerous."

"Nat, give Steve a chance before you do something irrational and he becomes my new bunk mate." He chuckled, hollowly, taking another sip of juice. She gave him a penetrating look, her fingers coldly tapped against the cold steel of the pistol. Unfazed by the reproach of her daunting semblance; Clint settled the cup on the table and sunk his back into the pillow. His spiked brown hair flattened as he began to drift. She was mere inches away from him, fuming and struggling to keep her stern composure. "I'm due for a long vacation from field work," he mumbled, heaving out a breath and forcing his eyes open just enough for her to see rims of icy grey. "Tell Fury I'm going off the radar for a few weeks and spending time at the farm. Laura has a list of things that I need to finish...I promised Copper that I would teach him how to drive the old rust bucket of a tractor."

Natasha shook her head as she let him take her hand voluntarily. The corner of her mouth turned up into an impish smirk as she rubbed her hand over his rough knuckles. "I think Fury already knows, since he had Stark pay for your medical expenses. You're clear to leave when the doctors says so..."

He sighed, meeting her darkened stare. "What about you, Tasha? Will you be able to handle everything without my eyes watching your back?"

"Oh, I think I can handle it, Clint," she whispered, confidence blossomed over her pale features. The harrowing sense of compromise resurfaced and she drained the cup of juice, throwing it into the trash can. She bent slightly down and pressed her lips onto his forehead, letting them linger there, feeling his clammy skin heat up in the wake of contact with her soft kiss. His eyes closed and a smug grin fastened on his lips. He was secured from danger and she felt assured that he would be standing at her side within a week—they were partners until the end of line. "Rest up at home base, keep Laura and the kids safe and I will see you soon, Agent Barton."

As Clint dozed off into his morphine daze, Natasha involuntarily twisted around on her heeled boots and moved to the doorway in fervent steps until she was obstructed by a towering shadow.

Steve stood stoically in the doorway, restricted and observant. He wore a plain blue jacket and frayed jeans that were fading with color. His displaced chiseled features were shrouded by the brim of his vintage Brooklyn Dodger's baseball cap. His crystallized azure eyes were heavy from lack of sleep. He was troubled, silent and hesitant.

Natasha momentary absorbed his entire appearance: he looked almost hardened by his faults; his ruffled blond hair poked along the ridges of the cap. The broad clench of his squared jaw was blemished with smudges of ash and there were flecks of glass lingering on the sagged width of his shoulders. Despite wanting to dig a knife right into his shoulder to make him feel the pain that Clint was enduring because of his heroic choices, Natasha held onto her restraint. It's was sickening.

"What are you doing here, Rogers?" she asked with acid bite in her harsh tone. "Haven't you done enough damage in one day."

"Natasha, I didn't mean for this to happen," Steve returned in a faint whisper, his eyes were unabashedly narrowed. He kept his distance and leaned his shoulder into the door frame. He pressed his lips into a flat line, avoiding her scolding glare. "I was my job to rescue hostages no matter which side they were on."

"Just admit it that you messed up on this mission, Rogers" she intoned, holding her stare firm. "It's because of your compassion towards the scum of humanity my partner is stuck with a fractured shoulder. It was a simple recon mission, not a rescue; Clint and I always get the job done without leaving a blood trail. You changed that directive and put your team at risk because you felt the need to save three thugs who didn't give a damn about our lives." She bit down on her lip, hard enough to collect the raw taste of blood. There was dissension rattling through her bones and she stormed out into the hallway.

"Natasha—"

Hearing the listless measure of despondence rising in his voice, she abruptly whipped her head around and shot him with an icy glare that speared into his heart. She was barely containing her rage. "I can't lose him...You understand that, Steve. In there is the only piece of resistance I have to the Red Room. I'm trying my upmost to believe in our partnership and to shake everything off. Whenever I do feel something people around me always feel pain...I'm not blaming you for what happened to Clint, I realize that I was the one who made the mistake of putting his life in the hands of Captain America...The man who never leaves a soldier behind." She searched Steve's face as his jaw flexed into a sour grimace.

"You want to know the reason why I went into the warehouse..." His storm blue eyes affixed onto hers. "Inside, there were two more hostages. A mother and a three year old boy." Fire was engulfing inside his chest, he gritted, patronizingly. "Fury didn't tell you everything about the mission, Natasha, because he didn't look deeper into the shadows. In war sometimes every line gets downplayed, but I follow my gut and because I did, two lives were spared."

Natasha stood silently in abashed silence as she digested this unexpected news. A dismal sigh escaped her parted lips. "Well, I guess I owe you an apology, Rogers," she leveled her eyes with his honest blue embers and she closed the distance between them, leaning against the door. "I'm sure once Clint hears the whole story—he'll trust your call."

Steve twisted his lips into a smile, his eyes were burning and searching for her credence. "Do you trust me, Natasha?" he asked softly

"Steve," she breathed out, holding a sly smile. "I don't even trust myself."

"Well, I trust you enough to share a cup coffee..." He offered with a bright smile, gesturing his hand to the direction of the elevator. She accepted with a simple nod. In that moment in disarming herself, Natasha couldn't imagine herself walking away. She needed it.

Natasha smirked, and looked at him, the raging storm had cleared. She was seeing endless sky blue. "You buying, Captain America?"

"Yeah," Steve echoed back, moving tentatively to her side, his large hand almost edging to grasp hers. "I'm buying, Agent Romanoff."

When they casually walked away side by side, Natasha looked back at Clint's room, more meaningful than before. She held her promise and knew that everything would be fine—she believed it.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**   
**

**{Heat}**

* * *

The inferno reflected in her eyes. Everything was being devoured, timbers and crumbling pieces of brick crashed against the ground creating vibrations underneath her feet. She was frozen in the moment...the tempestuous rage clashed against her heart as breath ceased in her lungs. Time was betraying every pulse that surged in her veins.

All she could hear was the soft utterance of his voice pulling her out of the red flames. She felt it, for the first time in her life, the desperate need to grasp onto something real and unbreakable—he was her anchor.

Tasting the blood trickling over her bruised lips, Natasha took the chance. Risking it all, she jumped off the ledge, freely into the air, above the hellish destruction. She refused to reach out for his gloved hand in that mere second when the force of gravity threatened to claim her.

"I can handle this on my own," Natasha called out, her voice wavered against the haze of entrenching heat and the dense black clouds of rising smoke. She gripped the ledge with her fingers, knuckles scraping against the cement revealing small flecks of blood. She was alive. For a length of time, Natasha gathered up her breath, heavy and clogged with taste of metallic and cinder. She felt the sting in her side, daring not to look. Her hand traced over the glass shard that dug through the protective layers of her tactical suit and pierced into her exposed muscle.

Gripping onto her reserves of strength, Natasha poised herself, took a deep breath and pulled the shard out fast, allowing the glass to drop into the the torrents of pain, she then hoisted her lithe frame over the barrier, reaching for leverage. She tasted the coppery tang of blood trickling down her throat, consuming her gut with a sour gush of disturbing waves. His hand grasped her shoulder and squeezed like a vice, and she whirled around, defenses rising in her veins. She regained balance and straightened onto her feet, narrowing her intent at the flames. She didn't want to look into the pure azure eyes of the super-soldier. "I told you that I was handling it..." She wanted to dash away to the stairway, possibly slam the door in his face.

"You're welcome, Agent Romanoff," Steve reprimanded, squaring his broad jaw. His gaze evident with cobalt flames that had seemingly seared into her. He didn't budge or yield under her death stare. They were standing on even ground, refusing to outmatch each other with the reproach of tension.

His skin was drenched with beads of sweat underneath his modified uniform. A "stealth strike suit—navy blue with silver reflective lines crossing his broad chest and the embossed star that held the gleam of his unyielding liberty. Steve crossed his arms over his firm chest, searching for his resolve as his brow creased into a strict countenance of authority. The hardened fierce look of Captain America. "You disobeyed a direct order and took a risk without your commanding officer's approval," he issued out a biting retort." I don't know how it works with you and Barton, but with me, I never leave a man…um…In this case a woman, behind."

"Lemme guess, you're used to saving a lot of damsels in distress?" she shot back, holding a hint of spite in her low voice. Steve felt his patience slowly unraveling into thin fibers. Deducing her resistance, Steve set his jaw and latched his glacial blue eyes on her. Natasha held her ground, folding her arms over her bust, and leveling him with an intense glare that was deadlier than the firestorm under them. "This isn't the 1940's, Steve. It's the real world. No one watches each other's backs anymore, you can't trust yourself with anyone no matter how reputable they may seem."

Steve remained stationary, despite battling his a riptide of emotions. He parted his lips and drew out a ragged frustrated breath. "I thought the whole point of partnership was trusting each other, Agent Romanoff?" he said factually, scrunching his brow into lines of vexation. His eyes were piercing and unblinking; confusion marched across his chiseled features as he took another step closer, breathing her unpredictable and defensible territory. As he looked into her livid and wrathful teal eyes, he searched for something that wasn't exposed to the firelight. "Look, if you don't want me as your partner, take it up with Fury. I'm only doing what that I think is right to save lives...I can't risk losing another…"

Natasha cocked an eyebrow. Vaguely she recognized the sorrow in his throaty voice, but she was too barred to pursue his emotional lapse and too cold to care. Still, she was a tad curious to indulge on his pain. "You're talking about your partner who fell from Zola's train?" she pried. Steve steered an abashed look at the blaze. "I read up on some information gathered from the old SSR files. The document claimed that he was missing in action...His body was never found." She paused, her lips curving into a smirk, "If you want to catch up on your reading, I can give you a box load of material."

"I don't need to read those reports," he whispered hoarsely, his tensed face crumpled into a distraught expression. It was almost as if he was silently grieving for that lost soldier. He was trapped in a paradox of consuming regrets and failures that were slipping the threads of his wary soul. He was "the man out of time" but also the soldier who had lost his home. There was nothing to go back to, everything in his world had been devoured by time, and the ice that kept him from it. His breath kept on catching as he searched for his resolve, and veered his head to the side, staring passively at the rooftops holding the flickers of red flashing lights belonging to the fire trucks assembling on the street.

The intense colors outlined his jagged-edged cheekbones until he blanched away and rejoined with the shadows. Nothing mattered anymore—just the next mission.

Steve clenched his hand into a tight fist at his side. "None of them are true," he wavered uneasily with a solemn edge in his voice. He lowered his head in reverence. "Everything is just different."

"You still haven't adapted to modern times, Cap?" Natasha asked, more sharply.

"Why does everyone keep on saying that?" he digressed, angrily, breath scorched in his lungs. He wasn't focused. "You don't know what it's like to lose everything you had and wanted because of choice. I can't just move on and pretend..." He lifted his head, staring back at her with a storm of inward fury obscuring the vibrancy of his blue irises. Natasha couldn't look away. She found a certain level of vulnerability residing beyond his stare, and she discerned the pain that wasn't exposed—the scars that were engraved—over his resilient heart and the need to repossess his fallen dreams. Steve released a deep breath. He sealed his lips into a rigid line of a grimace, and shifted an inch closer. "If I did, that would make me dishonest to my team. I always tell the truth, call it something my Ma taught me to do when reasoning with the worst—and also the best of things."

It wasn't an acceptable answer. "Why are you so concerned with trust issues?" she evenly demanded, casting a steady look at him. She diminished the stirrings of feeling a personal connection with him. Her heart was a piece of the Black Widow that couldn't be reckoned with, even if the intentions were pure while hers carried savage lethal impulses. She had to remain closed off, distance herself from him—it was the only way to protect him from the cold venom of her murderous variety of entwining identities and the bad blood they demanded. "There is no one in this world that can be trusted. Everyone has secrets that will never be exposed."

"You're saying that I can't trust anyone?" he beseeched, suddenly considering opting away to the stairway and finding his own way back to home base. Steve stiffened, his blue eyes tracked her movements as she swayed near the ledge. She turned her back on him, giving him no clearance to follow. "Tell me the truth," he spoke in a challenging tone; his wary expression becoming crestfallen with a haunted resolve in his eyes; intense flickers of blue lightning encroached over the darkness of his steadied pupils. She was becoming cast into a storm that grew over his marred heart. "I'll walk away if you can't offer it up."

Natasha spared him a glance over her shoulder, taunting him with a rueful smirk. "I think you already know the answer, Steve," she conceded, watching his assertive expression fracture. She winced, as a throbbing in her side increased and blood was starting to leak through leather. He paced closer, assessing her wound with a benevolent stare of concern. His gloved hand quickly encompassed over her hip. She reacted instantly at the electrifying touch and the heat penetrating in her bones—a sense of security—uninviting contact. She wasn't ready to be this close to the super-soldier—to his humanity. Her programmed and detached instincts told her to run.

"Natasha," he uttered, giving a disheartened sigh, evading her code name. His eyes pinned at her with a sincere and fathomless gaze, directly on the unprotected gash. Red splotched over her ivory skin. "You're hurt?"

"I'm fine, Steve..." she responded, unable to deceive him with an irritable snarl and a roll of her eyes. She was unmade to feeling all measures of pain, demoralized to convert to weakness. The remorseful driven assassin—the last Black Widow-was loyal to death, to her lifelong pledge of uncompromising vengeance. No man would ever make her submit to the denials of love—only blood was in her ledger, and there was no way to remove those stains.

Steve glared down at her, intent and sincere. "Stop lying to me, Natasha," he calmly said, discarding his hand respectfully off her jutting hip and inspecting the deep wound. His eyes never strayed. He seized her wrist, ripping the leather in his intrepid grip and hastily placed the piece of material on her side, easing the blood flow. His icy blue irises were locked onto the drops of red spattered on the cement. He parted his full lips, and tentatively caressed his fingers along outline of her curve. "It's clear that you need medical attention. That strip of leather isn't gonna hold."

"Since when did Captain America become a Red Cross nurse?" she smirked, falsely.

Unfazed by her snark, Steve drew out a long agitated breath. His lips curved into a weak frown, addressing her inquiry. "This isn't the first time I've helped treat a soldier behind enemy lines. Back then we didn't wait for backup to come. We did the best we could with what we had. We walked it off."

"You boys sounded resourceful…Effective at the least," Natasha whispered, with a fevered gleam aglow in her teal eyes, reclaiming her strength. Her cold demeanor shifted into a semblance of dejection. "I grew up in place that wasn't filled with soldiers who fought for our survival," she spoke with utter tone of distant trauma—blotted memories. "Volgograd was a place I had called home..." Steve looked at her with understanding in his gaze, no trace of judgment in his azure eyes, just sentimental purity. Sensing the utmost violation in her unraveling heart, Natasha clenched her jaw hard. She tried to seek omission in her unlocked confessions of her grim and tortured past. She had lost all those meanings—her dreams and ambitions stolen from her because she trusted a good soldier: Ivan.

Dismissing her pain, Natasha knifed her fingernails into her palm, casting a passive glare down at the floods of water gushing out of the ground. A team of firefighters were scrambling in front of the flashing trucks, grabbing hoses and targeting the embers of the violent inferno. It reminded her of the harrowing night she had last seen her mother before her world was devoured by flames and darkness. She had been stolen and degraded into an instrumental murderous tool, used to slay marked targets and leave no traces; just lifeless husks drained by her venomous bite. The Red Room turned her into a monster—stripped her down until all she felt was hollow bone.

Feeling numbness crawl over her distressing wound, she released a shaky breath and set her hand on the cold slab of cement barricading her from the detested coldness that ate away all the warmth. Becoming vaguely aware of the intimate moment slipping through the cracks of their walls, she veered her diverted eyes from the fire, keeping herself collective and unreadable. A shallow breath tore from her lips as she inwardly scolded the memories that replayed in her mind.

...Natalia...

"Everything was destroyed when the flames rose my dreams of living a good life; turning them into ashes along with all of my attachments," she trailed off in her words. Steve silently digested her warring fight in allowing pieces of her humanity to merge back into her. Urges overwhelmed her; a large part of her wanted to claim the lips of Captain America, mark him with a kiss of possession.

It would just be a kiss; nothing more than the simple instinctual contact of raw heat; breathless and dominating pressure that would end with a sense of empathy—detachment. But like all other times, she restrained those urges and sensations. She was condemned to feel them with her heart's unrest ever since she experienced her first love—the foot soldier who taught her to be ruthless; her dark angel in the Red Room that was taken from her—James.

She had been devoted to him—putting herself in his crossfire and allowing his cunning and ravenous lips to give her a taste of pleasure. It was only freedom in the shadows that was granted to her after she was left to feel nothing but cruel emptiness. "...but you move on—bury everything and search for another reason to live. It's all I've been known to do."

When she winced, feeling another eruption of pain, Steve caved his solid arms around her from behind, securing her against his firm torso. His soft wet lips tentatively brushed the indent of her jaw, tracing the skin with coils of heat for a second, but making her pulse accelerate a few irregular beats. "I'm taking you back to the Quinjet," he affirmed. She felt the vibrations of his voice prickle against her skin and her whole body was seared by the rippling warmth of his sculpted mass. He pressed his communicator in his ear, "Agent Hill, this is Captain Rogers. I need..."

"Steve, I don't need your help," Natasha protested evenly, her voice fierce and her skin paling from the amount of blood loss. Dizziness invaded her body as she swiveled on her heel; but she lost balance and he was quick reflex allowed him to support her with his arm.

All she could feel in those moments of drifting was the cold surface of his helmet resting against her clammy brow. Upon contact, Natasha tilted her head up, meeting the point of his nose as it dragged over her blemished cheek. His coaxing lips were shadowing over her mouth. She felt the heat radiate—it was a mere fragment of tension and unspoken desire.

He angled his head slightly down, giving her a chaste kiss—a feverish and undeniable taste of intermingling trust. He stroked his fingers through the ringlets of scarlet, breathing her in before she was swept up fully into his arms. That was when she realized he was carrying her to safety.

Her eyes never left his lips.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**   
**

**{Tension}**

* * *

Natasha felt the warm trail of blood running down her cheek. It was a moment of impulse. Her fingers dug into firm muscle, clawing into the pulsing veins. Her stomach crunched as she gained enough momentum of strength and agility. She flipped onto the massive armed operative then rammed his skull into the cement floor. She quickly bounced onto the heels of her tactical boots, her unruly copper locks slashed her ashen skin and the sour taste of blood seeped over her full lips. She had managed to seize control of the extraction point.

It was the pure rush of adrenaline spreading through the guarded layers of her pounding heart that reminded her that she was alive.

Whipping a Widow Bite gauntlet over her bruised jaw, Natasha involuntarily shifted her keen teal eyes around the iron paneled room before removing her loaded pistol from a holster strapped to her thigh. There was a foreboding sense prickling in her veins. Undaunted, she advanced closer to the stairway, cautiously stepping over the laden bodies scattered on the floor. It was a simple and effective mission. No delays. She had everything under control.

Staring intently down at the lax features of her victims, Natasha felt her lips slant into a dark smirk when the pain in her right shoulder departed. A shard of glass had pierced through the layers of her stealth uniform, burying itself deep into her flesh. It took awhile for her mind to register that she was indeed bleeding, but she never claimed those sensations as weaknesses. Enduring the trials of the Red Room made her unrelenting body become immune to feeling the blood drain from wounds of succession. She brought her wrist close to her lips and spoke lowly into the COMM, "Lower level secure, Cap," she listened to the static buzzing in the device. She released a calm and even breath, keeping her composure firm despite the knots of dread twisting in her chest. "Steve, do you read me?"

"I'm kinda in the middle of something, Agent Romanoff," Steve responded evenly, keeping his voice low with a grated edge. He vaulted over the railing with perfect ease, and slowly approached his marked target. Within seconds, he stealthy engaged his direct assault; wrapping his forearm arm over the man's neck and squeezing at the wind pipe until the assailant toppled to the floor, unconscious. He then charged towards the stairs, his shoulder rammed into the wall, creating a dent in the wake of his broad shoulder colliding with plaster.

Keeping himself unseen, Steve slid on his boots, ducking into the shadows the moment guards holding came into view, carrying automatics and scouting the compromised area of the warehouse. The Captain waited momentarily, assessing the weak spots of their bodies. He unlatched his silver and blue ringed shield off his shoulder's straps and calculated the range within his view, before tossing the shield into the air. He watched as the men lost their balance as the alloy disk ricocheted off of their vests with each bonk of collision.

It was a distraction, keeping them unfocused as Steve edged closer in stealth mode. He grabbed the shield with a third-degree spin and bashed a skull with it upon disarming an operative. He sprinted towards ledge in rapid speed. He was unstoppable and full momentum. He took a sharp left, grabbing another guard with his hand and yanking his bulky frame into a pile of rubber tires. The shield was held up to Steve's chest, protecting his heart as bullets started to rain from the shadows. His azure eyes pinned onto a gunman loitering near another loading platform. "Don't these guys ever quit?" he breathed out, heavy and frustrated as he watched his moving target.

"Don't tell me you're calling it quits, old man," Natasha casually jabbed back, climbing up the stairs, focused and poised. Her teal eyes scanned the darker parts of the level. "Maybe after, you'll finally take that cute receptionist at Stark Industries out on a date. What was her name again?"

"Worry about clearing the exit points and then find me a date," Steve returned, forming his lips into a tense grimace. He latched his gloved hands along the metal bar and hoisted his massive body up with effortless proficiency and ease. As he distanced himself from the industrial lighting fixtures, he regained breath back in his lungs. He began planning his next formidable attack, while at the same time struggling to maintain his focus on the mission. "Fury said it wasn't going to be easy..." he grunted nonchalantly into his wrist comm. "...then again it's kinda hard to walk away from a fight without—"

"Sorry to step on your moment, Steve," Natasha interrupted with a crackle of spite in her voice, moving through the corridor. She detected movement above her. A rueful smirk played across her lips as she wiped blood off her chin. She pressed a button in her Widow Bite gauntlet, recharging up lethal sting of energy. She hungered, seized and unleashed her fury while hastening to the stairs. She didn't care if Steve didn't approve of her methods. This was the Black Widow's hunting ground.

The super-soldier didn't understand her. She had her own way of doing things on these missions which often times compelled her to refuse following his orders. She had demeaned herself a lifetime of being obedient to the KBG, allowing her matured body to become a purposeful and embodied weapon of desire that she used to acquire and steal valuable information. Information that had a heavy price written in spilled blood.

There was a murderous power beneath her cunning, transparent guise; something that she contained by grasping onto figures of humanity. She trusted Clint with her life, but Steve there was an unknown bond that kindled deeper without the variants of sizable compromise and doubt. And yet, Natasha wanted to prove to herself that the past couldn't define the real woman—the ballerina who ran away from home. Natalia Alivanovna Romanova still existed—she just needed to cut the knotting threads of shadow to find her reflection again. Shaking off those remnants of emotions, Natasha collected her equanimity and locked her dangerous eyes on the target. "Well, Cap, looks like I've got some dancing to do..."

Responding to the snark wavering in her voice, Steve sighed out a disapproving breath, "Play nice, Natasha," he spoke clearly, holding an authoritative edge in his affirming baritone. His nose crinkled towards the unpleasant stench of decaying flesh that swept through the upper level. It was clear to his enhanced senses that the body of the harbor master was being stored within one of the offices caught in his scrutiny. "It smells pretty foul in here," his lips curled in distaste with his eyes aimed downwards. He silently took a moment of reverence for the life that had been taken. "Check all levels for hostages...Clear them out...We've entered a wasps' nest of HYDRA. I'm guessing you already knew about it?"

"Well, it did cross my mind that HYDRA had been data mining offshore SHIELD intel," Natasha returned, grabbing a crow bar off a crate. She used blunt force with a deadly sway of her poised hand, and struck an marked HYDRA operative's shoulder with violent whack. She listened to the bones snap in the wake of the iron impacting his flesh. The operative croaked out in pain, coughing up blood. Natasha then pushed into the crate then aimed a high kicked into his face, watching him topple to the floor with a smirk of satisfaction. "Nothing is ever conclusive in this type of business, Rogers. You just got to roll with it."

Steve drew out a frustrated breath, setting his broad jaw into a sharp clench."People are getting hurt because Fury isn't playing fair. He's gambling with lives because he sees hostages as a distraction for his missions. Soldiers risk their lives to save people from danger; they don't turn their backs and walk away from somebody calling for help. It doesn't look like SHIELD cares about protecting lives, they only value information." He admonished, sounding sickened by the ideals encrusted in the eagle symbol planted on the ground floor of Fury's home base. "I joined SHIELD to protect lives, not to use them as a means to an end..."

"One life can risk the whole mission, Steve," Natasha simply radioed back in a pant of breath, feeling the urge to roll her eyes. She instead focused on the objective point of the exit lift blocked by another operative. She took a moment to decide her next counter attack—fast and efficient. She got into a crouching position, then leaned her back against a ladder. She curved her lacquered red lips into a lustrous smirk. When he turned around, she played the flirtatious seductress. "Hey big boy," she purred sultry, with a daring glint was in her eye, before she kicked his side, making him crash down. She then looped her wire attached to her small belt compartment around his neck, and yanked him back and forward into a railing.

As he yelped in pain, Natasha jumped up and rammed her boots into his torso before flipping into the air. She descended past the stair levels with her guns poised and her fingers locked on the triggers. Once she landed on the bottom platform, she spoke back into the wrist communicator, "Sometimes the game we play isn't fair, but in the end the world is secured and everyone gets to sleep easy. That's what Fury does in order to make our world a safer place with the exception of a few ordinary lives—it's collateral damage."

To rid the coppery tang in her mouth, Natasha pulled out a stick of minty flavored gum and slid it over her tongue; relishing the cool and refreshing taste that consumed the dryness in her throat. As she ambled down the last set of steps, trying to avoid Captain Rogers: the Alpha leader of the STRIKE team. Steve was overpowering her disciplined thoughts; making her feel unbalanced as her gloved fingers clutched over the sleek metal of the Soviet firearms. She confidently stalked through the dim lightened corridor, searching for her exit when she heard a faint childish voice resounding in the basement.

Gritting his teeth, Steve seized up, resettling his feverish blue eyes back onto the metal rails; his stomach lurched as his addled mind was suddenly plagued with vivid and shattering images of Bucky hanging on the edge of Zola's train. Bucky's icy blue eyes were watering against the violent lashing of snow squalls whacking into him as he struggled to clasp the loosening branding rod. Steve's gloved hand tried to reach for Bucky's marred bloodied left hand; everything frozen and his heart was ripped apart the moment he saw Bucky's brotherly and confident smile morph into an expression of utter pain—fear.

Steve had never had forgotten that diminishing look plastered on his best friend's face as he faded into the harsh walls of snow, until the cries became distant echoes against his splintered heart. Bucky's cries haunted him during the hours of night when he tried to shut out of the world and focus on reclaiming peace—while suffering in the utmost solace. The recurring nightmares never creased to blot out—he could never delete that gut-wrenching moment out of his mind. It was a constant reminder of his greatest failure. Maybe, he needed to borrow Tony's vinyl record collection to ease the pain into a comfortable numbness of electric guitar and slow dumb beats.

Releasing out a shaky breath, Steve regained clarity in his blurring vision. He willed his stiffened arm to thrust upward as he grasped the rail and writhed his bulky frame over the ledge. His boots smacked onto the cement. "Well, this soldier isn't going home until those few ordinary lives breathe easy tonight," he genuinely declared with a heartfelt pledge residing in his voice. He pulled a wired device from his wrist guard, holding it close to his scowling lips. "Tell Fury, that Captain America's handling a different mission—I'm going off book."

"Steve, you can't—"

Steve whipped the small device to the ground, crushing it defiantly with the sole of his boot. "Sorry, Natasha," he hollowed his sharp cheekbones as he whispered brokenly, listening to the transmission of her protesting voice fade into the crackles of static. "I can't follow Fury's orders. I'm a captain of my own war—" His voice fell away to the familiar disputation of blaring tempo of "Shoot to Thrill" echoing through the walls of the entire building. The remaining HYDRA operatives scrambled with their automatics. Steve pressed his back against a wall, waiting for the glass of the skylight above to rain over him.

Within seconds, the hot rod golden metallic armor of Iron Man shot through the glass as Tony made his dramatic entrance, ramming one fist into the cement as he landed in front of the unimpressed captain.

"Hey Ice Cap," the egotistical billionaire teased, easing himself into a defensive stance, his repulsors ready to unleash a few blasts at the group of operatives lined in front of the crates. "I must say that I'm hurt; you guys decide to crash a little HYDRA party and didn't even get an invite," he effortlessly fired at two agents. His blasts struck their armored vests and they went down, breathless and stunned. He turned, the face plate lifted, revealing the suave face hidden underneath it. He settled his dark hazel eyes on the super-soldier. "...You're lucky I had nowhere to go tonight, old man."

Looking affronted, Steve folded his arms over his pectorals. "I thought you weren't a team player, Mister Stark?" he chastised and leveled his firm and intrepid blue eyes, glaring with sharp edges on the billionaire genius. He assumed Tony did have good intentions even though he caught the wafting scent of booze. Sighing, he pointed his gloved finger at the alloy chassis of the Mark XLII. "Can J.A.R.V.I.S detect heat signatures, possibly a few hostages?"

"J.A.R.I.V.S," Tony ordered his (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) sophisticated AI programmed butler. He aligned his metal gauntlet hand to the concrete flooring below them. He performed an internal scan over the area. "Give me the rundown on results of the scan. Chop, chop we haven't got all night," he demanded with a flippant tone.

"May I remind you, that last time we performed a rescue mission, you had to pay for the damage costs because you're never one hundred percent focused when working under pressure, sir."

Tony rolled his eyes under the shadow of his face plate, and let an irritable breath escape from his lips. He wasn't in the mood for hauling bodies out of the HYDRA infested warehouse. He was still fighting muscle strain from their previous battle somewhere off the coast of Spain. Everything was still foggy. "Just run the scan, J.A.R.I.V.S. And then we'll talk about your calculation after everyone is home safe..."

"I am picking up two heat signatures in the basement. Both female, one is definitely a child, sir," J.A.R.I.V.S clarified.

Steve dipped his head down, looking at the grated elevator lift. He flexed his jaw, "You stay here and wait for Natasha, I'll go down to the basement," he commanded firmly, defiance evident in his bellowing tone. He charged down the stairway, ramming whoever stood in his way into the wall. His stomach roiled, and blood accelerated in his veins as he continued his hurried descent, heading towards the elevator. Tony remained on the upper platform; leaning causally against the office door. He affixed his dark eyes on the unconscious bodies of HYDRA's guard dogs.

Once he reached the grated lift, Steve summoned up his eidetic memory, gathering reserves of information and donoting vivid images of the area that mentally guided him through the process of engaging his assault in the basement. He pressed the red button, and briskly stepped inside as the cables rolled back on the rusted pulley. When the grated walls of the elevator rattled to halt, he cautiously thundered down the hallway, the air was thick and damp.

Tasting the sourness of blood dripping over his full lips; Steve barred his teeth into a clench, seething monstrously and glaring at the dangling chains bolted into the seams of cement. A crack of a gunshot echoed in the sables of darkness and he was gaining momentum—spearheading and breaching the defensive lines and vaulting over oil drums positioned in front of rusted loading crates with his enhanced speed and agility. He wasn't stopping for anything.

His uniform was drenched with a feverish sweat and his muscles were burning. His leather boots created shock waves of relentless power as he spearheaded with his shield held by the extension of his right arm. He charged in, dodging the hailing bullets that dinged off of the indestructible virbrainum alloy. His face was aglow with feverish sweat, his azure eyes held an unyielding fire in that moment he locked his intimidating gaze on an armed guard standing near the doorway. It was surrounded by incapacitated men that seemed like a small army—spawns of the ominous murk engulfing the area.

Desaturated imposing shapes of lifeless corpses plagued his intense vision as the anchor chains swayed against the haze of white light.

Sucking in a deep breath, a growl tore from his lips as Steve spared a harried glance at a cage to his right—intently staring at a decaying heap of flesh. Daunted by the grisly sight, he wasn't able to process the extent of slaughter that had happened within the walls. He could only show a gleam of reverence in his eyes as he halted in front of the assailant blocking his path. "Now, I'm only going to ask once," he said, with firm intent surfacing in his strained voice, his jaw set rigid and shield lowered to his side. "Where is the kid?" he demanded, and there was grave utterance crawling up his throat. He lunged forward, grabbing the collared vest, and hoisting the unresponsive man close to his chest, his breath hot, "Lie to me, and I will throw him into that wall over there..."

Suddenly a bullet sliced through the man's skull. Steve dropped him like a sack of potatoes the second his senses caught the familiar vague scent of strawberry. He spun around and stared intently at Natasha...the merciless Black Widow holding a laden child in the cradle of her toned arms. The captain was visibly stunned and impressed by her heroics. His full lips upturned into a broadened tender smile. It was a rare sight for him, seeing the red haired reformed KBG assassin doing following a worthy cause without following an order. He stared down at the dark haired boy resting his head against her shoulder. "I owe you an apology, Natasha," he sighed with regret, losing all integrity as his voice faded away. He modestly leaned his Adonis build against the wall, "I acted out of line and didn't trust my partner."

"Don't get all sentimental on me, Rogers," Natasha drawled plainly, refusing to process his honest submission. A smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. She stared into his azure eyes that were boring into hers. "Sometimes I do play nice if there's a chance to go off protocol," she admitted, narrowing her teal orbs at the child secured against her chest. "I couldn't extract myself from the mission knowing that a life needed saving."

Satisfied with her truthful, unbidden answer, Steve proceeded forward, unexpectedly invading her space. His coils of breath deepened into heavy rasps; his heart felt wrenched in between his ribs. For a long set of unpredictable moments, he stared at her. Her copper locks became glowing embers in the darkness and he noticed a spark of humanity reflecting back at him; very brief, but real. She wasn't Peggy Carter, but there was a dangerous fire in her that only he could tame during the rare moment of succession.

He offered her a chance. "Just when I think I know you, Natasha, you never cease to amaze me," he eventfully replied with an appraising tone."Since we're on equal terms with trust issues, I think we can finally move ahead of our game. Besides, I'm not doing anything this Saturday night..." he swallowed thickly, all confidence fleeting, The little guy from Brooklyn was returning; his lips curled into a sheepish grin that made the chiseled lines of his face soften into a boyish expression."Do you wanna go dancing? I know a great place, not far from my neighborhood."

Natasha immediately twisted her lips into a half a smirk, "I'll go with you…" his blue eyes lit up at those words, "but on one condition."

"What?" he asked shakily, furrowing his eyebrows into a disquiet expression. Rigid tension locked in his chest; he was frozen in her perilous, alluring eyes. The admission was clear.

"You let me find you a dancing partner," she whispered darkly, holding his stern gaze. "No exceptions, Cap."

Steve chuckled mildly under his breath. Carefully he brought his hand to her cheek, his gloved fingers caressing the underside of her jaw. He unfastened the chin strap of his helmet, clutching it with his free hand. He bent head, and claimed her forehead with a hot swell of his tentative lips rolling against her skin, holding a kiss there," Deal," he murmured into her hair, closing his eyes and felt her breath ghosting over his squared jaw. She didn't fight back.

 


	11. Chapter 11

** **

**{Unexpected}**

* * *

Feeling the restrictive material of his uniform cling to his muscles, Steve concentrated on the tension building in his chest. With measure of control, he breathed in the cool air condition air wavering from the vent; searching for calm to moderate the pain that consumed his well-built frame. Wasting no time, he quickly discarded the top into the hamper as he passed the bathroom in fervent and determined steps; the aches and kinks of regressing muscles that generated from hard and relentless mission needed to absorb the pelting heat of water raining over his polished skin glazed with exhaustion and smears of blood. Pain had gripped his bones. Not to mention, that his unkempt ashen-blond hair felt greasy to the felt displaced in the walls of his impermanent home.

Each night felt like another sacrifice, giving himself away to the call of duty and keeping the mantle of Captain America alive...It wasn't an easy life to endure, he couldn't pick himself up and move on, shoving every shred of guilt deep into his core. The hard choices he made defined his life—the enhance serum that he willingly accepted to become infused within his blood turned him into an indomitable and skillful combatant, his body matured into an modern aged Adonis and his vitality was molded into human perfection, ageless and fierce, but his heart was scarred within every layer that had lost faith in humanity, mistrusting everyone and living on the knife edge that balanced the fundamentals of reason and deception.

Now, Steve was soldier without a home, family and promise. His world eclipsed into a shade of darkness, and there was no light piercing through it.

Carting his fingers though the disheveled locks, Steve exhaled shakily, trying to process his thoughts and disciplined all the torrents of raging emotions. He had endured immense levels of pain within the last 48 hours of holding up crumbling walls, flying into smashed vehicles and tasting the blood that pumped in his veins. After returning to Stark Tower, Steve chose to leave his aggression behind in the locker room, and give his body a chance to reclaim some form of repose and properly heal before going out back into the field.

Before he stepped into the shower stall, Steve placed the Stark phone on the ledge of the vanity; pressing the replay button of his playlist that Tony had personally downloaded for while under the supervision of Pepper—the song of choice was from back in his halcyon war days when he was huddled inside a tent with the Howling Commando's, Bucky would always sit on a whiskey crate with his rifle against his knee, his brown hair rakish with tresses on his broad forehead and pale blue eyes brightly observant to the unseen dangers hidden in the thickness of the forest. He would play with his dog tags, while the curve edge of his lip hugged a cigarette.

Those were good and unforgettable memories that could never become enshrouded from his heart.

He curved his lips into a content smile, remembering how Gabe Jones would sit in the middle of the tent on a bucket, adjusting his radio to different and poplar songs (Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye, You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To, I Don't Want to Walk Without You) that were broadcast from the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress that thundered pass their camp during those dearly afternoon hours of staring into the grayness of rain and waiting to be called back into the natural zone.

The soldiers of the 107th unit cherished the simple things like music and pieces of chocolate as rewards for their unknown victories; the ones that would never be written or told in history documentaries-each song that played against the echoes of heavy artillery and the rumbling engines of the heavy bombers gave each of them a sense of peace and remembrance of what home felt like before the shadow of war.

Holding his lips into a broaden smile at those fond memories, Steve waited for the song to load while he stripped his under shirt off, allowing his bare pectorals, oblique's and the sculpt of his V shaped torso to breathe as sweat cooled over planes of compacted muscles that had been straining for the last three hours. There was evidence of the battle still visible on his skin, minor gashes and blemished. It was nothing that the regenerative components of the serum couldn't dissolve while he slept off his regressed emotions.

After fully stripping out of his uniform, the battle worn captain turned up the volume on the phone, and lumbered to the stall, opening the glass door, twisting the knob, within seconds gushing hot water poured out and he was inhaling the froths of steam, and yet he felt cold reproach vacancy sear inside his chest. Almost like an incompleteness of an uncommitted and grieved desire he had forced onto himself.

_...Don't be late..._

Every chance Steve had to rebuild a stable promise, faltered when images of the beautiful and steadfast Peggy Carter invade his mind. He couldn't escape from the unsettling regrets of allowing his love...best girl...to dance with another partner at the Stork Club. It was unthinkable to picture, clawing against his heart, and making all emotions run a glacial course in his veins.

The anguish navigated him back to the torrential moment of listening to Peggy's urging voice fade into crackles of static on the  _Valkyrie's_ radio as he released his gloved hands on the steering controls, and spearhead into the beds of ice. The benumbing water gushed inside the cockpit, engulfing him into the depths as he struggled to breathe out her name for one last time, before his tears froze and heart beat slowed as he sunk into the fathoms of his icy grave. Alone and forgotten to rebuilding world—just a memory frozen in time.

_...Never lose who you are...And who you are meant to become..._

Regardless, on how much Steve tried to adapt, the heartache still grew constant and desperation eventfully seized him to the point he felt torn into separate halves of his existence.

Closing his eyes, Steve fought against the unhinged urges to crash onto his knees, to fully surrender his heart, spirit and soul to past; he gripped his fingers over the cool edge of the vanity, his muscles strained against the resistance spiking through his bones and the pain still resided within every fiber of his body. It was stabbing thrall utter discomfort; persisting when he drifted back into the realms of memory.

Gathering his stern composure; Steve screwed his eyelids shut, releasing uneven pants of breath, the phantom anguish of his heartache crawled through his veins, merging into the marrow of his bones. Steve tried to face his demons -violent and maniacal cascades of reserved memories and condemning decisions he made to assure that light would spear through the chaotic, dark palls of HYDRA.

He leaned into the vanity. The bathroom spun. Everything was revolving into unsettled haze of red, and his heart squeezed unevenly into a sharp clench. He couldn't tolerate with this torturous lapse consuming him; he needed to search for release. Instead, Steve had closed the doors and isolated himself, masking his pain from the rest of the Avengers, including Natasha.

He didn't deserve her concealed values towards him, she was a woman of many fallacious lies, torment and also a hardcore killer trained not to harbor emotions. Clint Barton was the only man she trusted, the one that didn't pull the trigger and retire her from the service of the KGB. The archer gave her a chance of purpose, and reached the part of heart that wasn't damaged by scars. They formed a bond of preservation with each other, treating their lives missions and collecting pieces of their shady pasts, if one of them got shot, the other would bandage the wound and finish the job, without dismissing their concern emotions.

Steve understood that Natasha and he were on different sides of a fractured world, and the gap would keep on building if he fully disarmed himself for her to infiltrate his guarded secrets -the ones he kept locked within an uncompromising area of his uncertain soul. The recurring flashbacks of nightmares that plagued his mind when he drove his raging fists into the punching bag at the old gym; ripping the restrictive chain off the support beam and making grains of sand leak through the gauged holes that were created by the his tainted fury. Tonight, he had measured amounts of livid anger flooding in his veins, so much trepidation weighting him down, and so much guilt drowning him.

He trusted Natasha as an alliance for recon and extraction missions; but nothing seemed to become stable enough to put his faith into her hands. There were a number of enemies out here, waiting in their ambiance of patience to strike him into the heart by harming people he loved. He couldn't risk that chance of allowing his partner serve as a target because of his faults that needed reckoning by his own defeat-his own high cost of surrendering every fiber of himself in order to prevent Natasha from tasting his mistakes.

Steve was on the razors' edge of becoming an emotional wreck; it was unbound emotions that churned in his stomach, forcing him to taste the bile rising up his raw throat—he had known for a few months that everything would bled out of him during when he inexplicably reentered the labyrinth of his mind; he couldn't function without tasting the salty trek of his tears melt against his taunt lips; he felt the slashing blades of ice carve into his exposed and battle torn skin.

Unabated pain started to intermix with the pulses of intense energy. The unnerving sense of putting faith into his new team was hard for him to cope with; they weren't the Howling Commandos, just rookies—misguided amateurs with untamed power and not enough discipline to structure balance of choice and will. He wanted to remove himself from their fundamental world, since nothing felt real enough for him to grasp onto.

Steve didn't belong under Fury's imposing, authoritative shadow of compromise. He refused to become an expandable soldier of SHEILD's interest—an unwilling asset hired to finish deceptive missions in order to secure cores of tampered secrets downloaded on another form of new technology. He needed a purpose to regain stability. It was meaningless for him to dwell into, he was a veteran soldier who never returned home and never embraced the love from his right partner; everything had been stolen from him—years and moments of importance forever lost because he kept on fighting until the plane crashed into the arctic water along with HYDRA's weapons of mass destruction.

When he awoke as the ice thawed out of his body and heartbeat was restored—his eyes still held the tears of his losses and within days Steve learned how to adapt, starting from the beginning of the road he was taking. In some ways it felt like a cursive life, everyone he knew from the past was either six feet under or residing in nursing home. There was no more turning way, Steve chose his solo path and carried out his promise that he made to good friend and he couldn't betray that pledge.

After relieving the pain in the stillness of the bathroom, he lumbered back to the shower, and then he gripped his fingers over the steel edge of the foggy glass door; suddenly an urgent rapping sound echoed through his apartment. Sensing a feverish prick of dread in his veins, Steve was quick to respond, turning off the water and grabbing a pair of jeans, hurrying to slide the denim over his muscled legs before pulling on a gray shirt that covered the considerable amount of bruises gathered on his sculpted torso.

"Yeah, I'm coming," he managed to call out, with an irritable edge in his baritone, pacing down the hallway, passed the living room and halted in front of the locked down. His large hand reluctantly twiddled over the chain; lock, and brow furrowed into a debatable crease; he wasn't expecting anyone. "Hold on a sec," he added; speaking with an undertone of his inviting Brooklyn accent; using time to catch a deep breath, and summed his defenses while turning the knob. He stepped back utterly stunned at the taunting vision of Natasha slanting her lithe, curvaceous body against the stairway rail, unruly scarlet locks framed over her vibrant alabaster features, and she stared at his dumbfound and slightly affronted expression with a dangerous glint flaring in her teal irises. It was an elusive look that gave him the impression that she meant business.

"Agent Romanoff," he addressed her, with an authority in his low voice, his deadpan stare of azure locked onto her full irresistible lips painted with a tempestuous shade of red. Narrowing his gaze involuntarily to the floor, Steve felt rife with curious on the reason she came to visit him during the late hours of the evening. She never intruded his personal space, unless she required something from him. "What are doing here, Natasha?" he asked in almost a strained breath, intently searching in her alluring obscured eyes; he wasn't going to allow her to claim him into her tangled web of lies.

"Relax, Steve," she eased with a shrug, pulling her lips into a faint smirk, catching the old tune of a song replaying through his dim lightened apartment, it was easy for detect that he was entirely alone, and judging by the staleness of dried blood wavering from his massive form, she knew that he hadn't showered. Looking his shoulder, Natasha settled her gaze directly at a platter of untouched strawberry cheese cake on the counter top. "I'm not here to invade your privacy, although, it does look like you need company."

Feeling no sense of denying the emptiness he tried to bury, Steve accepted the offer that plainly seeped from her coaxing lips. He sheepishly grinned back at her, his azure irises bright and welcoming, as he noticed her eyes drifting back to the dessert that he had bought from a local bakery across from his gym. "You know what; I do need someone to share a piece of this cake I recently bought. It's a pretty expensive cake..." He leveled his agreeable stare with her; rapid surges of impulse rushed through his bloodstream, his lips pressed into a timid grimace. "...would you be interested, Agent Romanoff?"

The semblance of the cunning and unbreakable Black Widow was slipping, his invitation became envisage for her to respond, in a faltering pace of her heart, Natasha darted her wary eyes to the stairway, fighting against the urge to run, but then she considered the circumstances of spending time with benevolent and powerful the super-soldier, she never felt the effortless attachments of an amity between someone other than Clint. It was new and alarming for her to seize, but maybe also a daring risk that could lead into something pure. "Do you trust me enough to enter your place, I could be armed, Rogers?"

"Well, I do know how to dismantle a gun, Natasha" he said evenly, with an unguarded stare, and removed himself from the doorway, gesturing her with a tentative smile to enter his impermanent home. When she briskly clicked her spiked boots across the scuffed floor, he thoughtfully caught a glimpse of her pistol strapped at her hip. "Besides you're not the first dame...I mean...beautiful woman...who shot a few rounds at me."

Natasha mirrored his boyish confident expression, with a dicey smirk, pinning her eyes on his shield prompt against the couch, and then shifted her gaze at his lustrous, honest blue eyes, knowing that he was taking a gamble with her. "Do you need a knife to cut into the cake?"

In that moment, Steve became lost within the depth of her teal eyes, and smirked at her scheming words. "No, I think I've got it covered..."

Natasha inched a purposeful step closer; her sensuous lips aligning with the center of his solid pectorals, and his idled hand was almost breadth away from grasping her wrist to pull her into deep, breathless kiss. He respected her boundaries, and didn't let his thoughts dwell too much on that untamed desire. After all, Natasha was armed with more than her armory of weapons hidden underneath her leather jacket.

Pulling himself back away from the shadows of the doorway, Steve regarded her with his unyielding blue embers, and she silently observed his unspoken eagerness. They both craved something far more indulging than cream cheese with glazed strawberries; but for tonight both the soldier and the spy decided to value the other's sudden need for solidarity to the unpredictable world they both had fallen into as equal fighters of their own liberation.


	12. Chapter 12

 

****

**{Morning Confessions}**

* * *

Natasha woke up to a startling revelation that she was inexplicably falling in love with Captain America. Her lithe body wedged against him, her back aligned into the chiseled definition of his bare torso, feeling the pulsing heat ripple with the sync rhythm of her heartbeat.

She responded to the heat of his broad frame intensely embracing her into steady waves of inescapable contentment; and Natasha couldn't deny that she had craved to live in a moment with him, no coldness hitched through her bones; just indomitable warmth that grew stronger when she finally accepted the regretful need to melt into the security of his arms. They were fitting together, broken pieces merging into whole— _completeness_ , and she never wanted to abandon him.

Twisting her body under the coverlet, her mussed scarlet ringlets fanned across the pillowcase, as she was practically weightless and distant to her deceptive conjuring.

With her disobedient heart rapidly drumming a beat, Natasha involuntarily settled her intent, calculating teal eyes on his peaceful-angelic face. His razor-edged cheek dug into the pillow curled, blond hair ruffled and spiked, and his eyelids lazily fluttered as he begun to stir under the layers of sheets raveled over his massive form. Sighing out a calm exhale, Natasha curved her full, pastel lips into a smile, drinking in his boyish and commanding visage while detaining all faltering emotions. She couldn't afford to disarm herself, it was grave risk. Just...Deadly. Compromise.

Natasha wasn't used to being accepted-welcomed-it was strange and intangibility unnatural. A tempestuous glimpse of what she could have if there were no macabre shades of red staining her ledger. This was forsaken situation of unexpected circumstance that she couldn't bury into the shadows.

It was seemed surreal to absently believe in deliverance, and yet Natasha desperately tried to convince herself to separate -to run before she pulled the super-soldier into the fathoms of her dark, betraying world. She felt emancipated from the weaves of the intuitive, daunting and venomous Black Widow; a new untainted desire possessed the recesses of her ingenious mind, forcing all her qualms to submit as she descried for a chance of redemption. Mortal comfort was an entity that couldn't be warranted in her methods of survival. Granted, it had become an unrelenting impulse of indulgence, Natasha needed to rebuild her inexorable barriers and shut him out. No exceptions.

For a long moment of being a captive in oppressive silence, the Soviet operative affixed her obscured ultramarine irises on the rise and fall of his carved- solid chest, listening to audible hitches of breath ghost from his arched lips. Regressing against the invading thoughts, Natasha tore her gaze away from his angular face; and stared at the plates on the dresser, remnants of the strawberry cheesecake they had shared during the late hours of the night were smeared on the ceramic. It wasn't until Natasha roved her stare back onto his face, and noticed evidence of their fierce passion besmirched at the twitching corner of his lips. She had left her mark on him.

_'Is it false hope?'_  Deceptive thoughts lingered. Natasha stared at him for a long set of moments; fighting against the resistance harboring her to drift away, she straighten her posture against the headboard, sucking up deep breaths while she tried to reevaluate her trivial efforts of claiming him as the Widow's prey.

Considering the amount of trust that had been exposed, she refused to adjust to sentimental needs while her damming heart beckoned her to reenter uncharted territory. "Oh boy," she heaved out, practically allowing thirst of tasting his lips to control her as her fingers traversed over his chest, possessively and aching to grip onto the rippling planes of slick muscle. A couple of breaths, and she was engaging internal war-teetering closer to the point of no return. Whatever happened last night, she wanted more...his whole body reeked of exhaustion, but without hesitation, she closed the distance, shadowing his face until they were parallel inadvertently adjoining as her lips opened to steal his breath.

Before she could encompass her devouring mouth over his lips, Steve groaned as he awoke from a dreamless sleep; his eyebrows arched as his lashes battered a few times, and she waited with noxious anticipation, watching the morning light refract in the deep, luminous chasm of azure and metallic gray, the colors of a calming ocean with reflections of trusting light. He looked at her, still distant, and unsure.

"Good morning, soldier boy," Natasha teased with a hoarse whisper as she caressed the bulge of muscle on his bicep, fingers circulating over freckles. Steve creased his eyebrows, taking everything in, recollecting memories and trying to reach a conclusion on why the red haired spy was sleeping in his bed-wearing his black shirt and... His eyes lit, and heart leap in his chest when he caught the sheen of ivory underneath the blankets. She was exposed.

"Natasha," he spoke in a distorted voice, swallowing down a breath. Sweat dotted his chiseled features, he almost looked mortified. Natasha couldn't repress an impish smirk. Distinctly, he lifted the covers, just to double check that he still had the same pair jeans fastened over his slender waist. "Did we...I mean..." He took another unsettling gulp. He sheepishly queried the invariable question, his mouth hanging agape. "Fondue last night?"

_'Always with the honesty, Rogers.'_

"Well, we did have some cheesecake, Steve," Natasha assured him reflectively; giving him a sense of relief while she explained the details. A low seductive purr remained evident in her husky voice. She selected her answer carefully, holding his effervescent blue orbs. A vague feeling of indifference denied the truth and most of her emotions spiraled down into the weaves of her detestable soul, extracting the warmth out of her veins.

Staring, into the stormy gaze of the defiant, ageless soldier, it seemed that Natasha hardly felt connected with her past. Still, she wanted to play the game a little while longer. "We dipped strawberries in chocolate. Since you have a very, _very_  high metabolism when it comes to midnight snacking. "

Looking a tad affronted, Steve cocked an eyebrow, aware of the words she had pinned on him. "Thanks for clearing that up," he conceded with a raw breath. He swiped his hand over his drenched forehead, brushing away the wayward tendrils of blond, and then lifted his bulky mass with his elbows, settling his back against the pillows. His eyes drooped unassumingly shut for a moment, as he drew out a wakeful sigh. "I remember kissing you, but everything else is blur to me," he genuinely admitted.

"Don't worry, Steve," she patted his chest a couple times. Regardless of what she wanted to claim for the captain, it wasn't the right time to fully expose her secrets to him. A kiss meant nothing, and yet she was concealing her toll fatal circumstances that happened when the Black Widow drained life from her captured prey. "Nothing else happened between us, Captain America," She brusquely added. "I respect you enough not to take your honor away...Well maybe your breath."

Steve felt a shiver of disgust rattle through him. "That still doesn't explain while you're in my bed, Natasha?" he enunciated severely, with firmness wavering in his authoritative tone. His azure embers bore a fierce glow of skepticism, and the taunt muscle of his squared jaw set into a sharp, intimidating clench. "I will ask you only once, did you sleep with me last night?"

"You still don't trust me, Rogers?" she played coyly. Steve was obviously uncomfortable with the idea of her invading his personal space, he looked uncertain while absorbing the laden and jarring deception glinting in her grayish eyes. She was pushing him to the edge; because of the thought of him spending the rest of his days isolated from closeness birthed an infuriating eruption of vexation that she didn't want to unleash. "I could give you a reason to,"

Steve's brow furrowed, and his eyes darkened with unsettling revelation. "So nothing happened?" he breathed, as he asked the oblivious question. "Why are in my bedroom?"

Natasha glanced down at his engraves of muscle, and met his unyielding gaze."Nothing happened," she explained, mastering her betraying emotions from resurfacing as she continued her defense." I slept on the couch, until you woke me up screaming out someone's name...Bucky?"

At that, Steve felt his expression fracture. A vivid, painful glimpse of Bucky hanging onto the separating hinges of the train rail seared through his mind, screaming and ripping agony through the devoid of unforgiving whiteness.

_'Bucky. Take my hand. Take my hand, Buck. Don't let go...'_

His gloved hand was in reach, just a few centimeters and he looked into terrified pale blue eyes of his friend— _brother_  looking up at him as tears dispersed in those unpredictable moments, and he wanted to save him, give Bucky a chance to redeem his strength, but when he watched fear and acceptance solidify on the young sergeant's frozen face, he could release a strangled cry and allowed his best friend to fade into the icy depths of the canyon. And then, the images dissolved and he was back staring into her eyes, projecting remnants of his recurring torment. "Sorry, I never meant to wake you," he whispered in utter disdain. "I guess my conscience sometimes likes to relive the war days."

"So, I'm guessing this Bucky was your friend in the war," she asked, instinctively. "He was possibly, your best friend?"

"Yeah," Steve deadpanned out a labored breath, reigning control of his emotions. Resentment coiled in his veins, burning through bone. A sting of tears sat in his eyes when he evidently fought against the constant numbness prickling over his heart. "James Buchanan Barnes, the only kid in Brooklyn who sacrificed his freedom to take care of little guy who was too dumb to run away from a fight. He was my big, protective brother, and I thought at one time we could've been invincible, but when Buck got knocked off the train, I knew it wasn't something to believe in anymore." He heaved out a discontent—nonchalant sigh. "So much for wishful thinking."

"It's the game of life, Steve, things never work out the way we planned them," Natasha said, caressing her fingers over his rough knuckles with a slow, reverent touch. Steve instantly narrowed his eyes, looking at her small hand overlapping warmth over his large one. "All we can do is survive another day. Sometimes, it will get easier, but if we meet failure, we just push through it."

His chest seized, anger surged in his veins as he started drowning into an undertow of remorse, and he couldn't reach. It was condemning.

"I can't push through it," he growled, stiffening his lips into a sour grimace. "My best friend is dead because of my choice to hesitate, you think I don't know how to survive in the darkness, I charge through it every day, Natasha." He released a raw declaration, fighting an unsettling discourse. "I hate watching good people die when there is always a chance to save them, but how can we beat those odds when death always finds a way to cheat us out?"

Natasha pressed her lips tight, revealing her dimples, and then shrugged. "I don't know, saving people has never been a part of my allotted missions, but I think all we can do is try, since we're only human...well most of us anyway."

After taking a few moments to collect himself, Steve managed to give her a weak, genuine smile. "Well, it looks like we've got a lot of work to do in this dangerous business."

"You seem overly confident for guy who's got nothing left to lose," she teased with a little smirk, her teal eyes shining.

Steve entwined his fingers with hers, lifting her hand to his lips, and carefully pressed a soft, trusting kiss over her knuckles. "Good comeback, but there's just one thing, Natasha..."

Her eyes flashed dangerously, pulling her hand away. "What?" she spat, unfettered.

When she tried escape from his security, Steve pulled her down with possessive force of roaring desire, his hot mouth leaned up against her skin, and then crushed her lips into oblivion, taking the breath from her lungs and allowing her mouth to melt as heat and love merged into a deep, compressing kiss—everything drained and their heaving chest solidified, but they never stopped.

Both the soldier and spy fell away into untainted realm, and poured everything into the other, not knowing that their vigorous, intense venture of passion was driving them closer of breathing the ultimate barrier and releasing measures of unbidden strength —making the other become whole—one unbreakable wall against the storms.

As he emerged for air, Steve hotly bated out a raw and undeniable truth against her lips. He tenderly cupped her face and grinned back at her, having not felt so sure, calm and unhinged in all his life—she had made him come back alive. He kissed her again, breathless, smiling as he accepted her fully into his world. "My hands aren't empty anymore, Agent Romanoff—"

"I know, Captain," she murmured deeply, closing her eyes, allowing him to steal her nightmares away.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

**{ The Other Partner...}**

** **

With a causal movement of his hand, Clint swiped a pancake from a platter; Natasha seemed equally collective with the convenient situation. Everything seemed to barely register. He took a bite into the fluffy flat cake, while his lips upturned into a roguish smirk. He briskly glanced at the vibrant red-haired assassin leaning poised against the kitchen's island. It didn't take him long to detect that she was out her natural element of deception, her passive, alabaster features held an unspoken secret.

There was an unvaried purpose behind her graceful stance, and he vaguely sensed that something reverential was conspiring between them; they exchanged shifty glances and remain silent, unreadable until his eyes became keenly affixed on her glass of poured cranberry juice. It was obvious that Natasha was avoiding his interrogation tactics, of uncovering passive; Clint kept his distance from her, silently observing the exposure of her unforeseen resistance.

Carefully, the archer inched closer within the Widow's restricted proximity, holding her calculating stare. Natasha tensed as she felt trapped within grounded truth about her unintentional accord with the incorruptible leader of the Avengers. "So are you going to tell me what is going on with you and Cap?" he asked, challenging her with a daring glint in his eyes. "No more playing the lying game this time, Nat."

Scoffing a little, Natasha twiddled with her fork, unresponsive, she dismissed the invasive question. She refused to stare into his sharp, penetrating grayish irises. With a light coax of furtive smirk, she played it cool with executing her defense. "There is nothing going on between us, Clint," she falsely admitted, swirling a piece of cooked batter in a gob of syrup. Her infuriated teal eyes leveled with his concern, knowingly expression."Besides it's really none of your business what I do, Agent Barton."

Clint pulled out a chair, and straddled down, his elbows resting on the mahogany backrest. An impassive semblance crept over his chiseled, rugged features. Natasha observed his firm lips tugging into a boyish smile. The steely and reserved exterior of the elusive SHIELD operative vanished at the moment when flecks sunlight laved over his matured, chiseled face.

"Tasha," he resumed with tenderness evident in his gruff baritone. He took another bite of his rolled up a pancake, before addressing his concern for her unspoken intentions towards Captain America. He swallowed, wavering his gaze over to Laura's coffee mug that had Lila's small, different colored hand prints. A symbol of family—a conventional life. He schooled his patient expression into a gentle admission of confidence.

"This isn't a mission," he admonished, recalling the incognito assignments he obliged to execute, despite fully breaching a connection with her as a devoted, passionate lover, claiming her lacquered, crimson lips with feverish, breathless kisses and molded his rough hands over her jutting, exquisite curves. He'd always made her unlock without countable, modest hesitation.

He knew how she worked, the performances and the aftermath. Regardless of his tampered, incoherent desires; Clint never considered himself a tied lover to her; everything they did was for succession of the mission—their kindred romance had become invalid.

"You need to cut the ties of the Black Widow, and fully accept whatever feelings you have towards the old man," he murmured softly, almost biting his tongue. "If you want a chance to live out of the shadows, then be real to him."

"I think you're over understating things, Clint," Natasha returned abruptly, with a casual undertone. As irrational as it seemed, she refused the attachment of sentiment to cloud her expert judgement: Steven Rogers didn't have an allegiance with darkness; he was light, pure and unyielding, and she never wanted to taint his heart with the vindictive coldness of the ruthless and cunning Black Widow.

Licking the maple off her lips, Natasha turned her intent focus back onto Clint, her loyal partner, co-worker and best friend—her brother. She owed everything to the archer, not because he made a different call, and lowered his bow aimed for her; but he saved her from drowning in a chasm of red and gave her second chance to redeem her incorrigible mistakes.

_'I'm not going to take your life. It's seems you already had it stolen from you.'_

Reasoning with her unending guilt, Natasha became indifferent to concept of building a devoted relationship to a virtuous, dominant man who fought against impure sin that had been molded into her virulent, conditioned body.

"You know why I can't have someone more than a partner...I would be just cheating out his heart, because..." There a bitter pause in her raspy voice, her eyes flashed downward at the faded scarring around her wrist; remnants of her imprisonment branded on ivory flesh to isolate venomous spider locked away from the outside world.

_'When the Black Widow bites, she kills and never leaves her prey gasping for breath.'_

Steve didn't belong to into her web. He was Peggy's dance partner. And she couldn't deny that naive Adonis still held Agent Carter's withering heart. She accepted the complete abandonment, unhinged feelings of mortal desire. Glacial possession of something that she could never claim as her own, because she was unmade, stripped into two halves and condemned to not to sense the aura of masculine strength."...it's what I was created to do."

Clint nodded mutely, understanding her resentment. "You have a choice, Nat," he said in a calm breath, sliding off the chair, and infiltrating her space. He stopped before his work boots breached her shadow. "Do you remember what I did to keep you from going under?" Clint went straight to the deep question; he didn't remove his sincere, abiding gaze off her crestfallen face.

"You mean when I screwed up," she whispered evenly, the damage was still palpable in her obscuring teal eyes. "You never let me go, even when I tried to run, you held onto me long enough to ride out the storm."

Clint stifled a weak smirk at that. "Yeah, I have few scars to prove it," He cast a dismal glance down at her, and heaved out a raw, aching sigh of repressed defeat. He couldn't summon his reserves of strength to push through the toxic haze barricading recesses of his addled mind; everything seemed unbalanced. It felt like, any moment he would slip back into the devoid and loses his existence forever.

Performance was necessary to keep his integrity stable; he had a loving wife as his support at home base, but some disheveled part of him believed that a family was the one thing undeserved for him.

His willpower had been diminished, and faith within himself extracted when he unwillingly fell into abyss of Loki's twisted, empowering and demented weaves magic; forcing the disciplined strongholds of his mind to submit into a listless obedience, and do things that couldn't be rectified by a heartfelt promise. It cut him deep, that he placed an arrow into Natasha's heart when he fought her with all measures of the brutality of his modified combat training; it became turn of compromised emotions, and he would have never escaped the darkness without her pulling him back out.

"Back then, everything was simple and effective, we knew who had our backs and used practically instead of irrationally. Now, we're just dangling on strings, waiting for someone to cut us loose, Nat."

Natasha stared into his steady gaze; unsettled remorse against Loki's invasive trickery was distinct beyond the stormy gray of his irises. The damaged was severe, crawling in his veins, poisoning his thoughts with lingering impulses to betray his team mates—his best friend. He was unable to rest, to feel the genuine joy of fatherhood without holding a false semblance to deceive his family.

"What's become of us, Clint?" Natasha asked under her breath; feeling the common ground between them falter. There was distance in her voice, a corrosive wound of perilous regrets. Her lithe fingers deftly caressed the butter knife; the impulse to arm herself grew potent as she released uncertain breath. "Do you think it's time for us to retire ourselves from the past?"

Clint's unshaven jaw flexed, he looked deeply into her ultramarine eyes, searching for answers converted by availing trauma. "I wish it was that easy, Nat," he drew up a ragged breath, his face twisting into a display unresolved anguish. "Once you're pulled in, it becomes harder to get out." he whispered, somberly, remorse broiling in his veins.

He lifted his gaze back at her, genuine and filled with certainty. "Unless you have someone close to shadows watching your back..." His thoughts became inaccessible; as he searched for the words that held enough dimension of assurance. He had always been her life line from the traumas of the past.

Saving Natasha was the best decision he had ever made, in some way it was redemption for his defective heart as well. His origins came from different shade of darkness; living on the road with the Carson Carnival of the Traveling Wonders: befriending people who justified their faulty mistakes, and creating lifetime enemies: the Swordman, Crossfire, Taskmaster and Trick-Shot. Each ruthless, masterful hellion never stopped tracking him down.

The emotional and physical abuse of his past, what he lost when his father downed in whiskey and the betrayal of brotherly trust...It roosted in him, even during his years of military training, his deafness kept him off- balance.

* * *

_"Hey, hot shot, why don't you tag along with me...Barton boys can do a lot damage in a uniform..."_

_"I'm not gonna to walk in your shadow, Barney," Clint breathed with harsh intent, leaning against the door frame, his gray eyes settled directly on the 9mm chamber Beretta glinting in the dim light. He knew the path his older brother chose_ — _the contract Barney signed in blood by disgracing the good measure of humanity that resided in his bulky, towering form._

_Barney wasn't a soldier, just disreputable pawn for a game of shadows, not a protector of liberty, but a grave digger working for a reaper. "I know my value, even if you think I'm nothing but a farm boy..." He squared his jaw, and stared up intensely at his brother, advocating his defense. "One day I will be there on the other side of the line that you crossed."_

_Hearing the condemning tone of his brother's voice, Barney cracked his raw, fractured knuckles, evidence of his current failures. He was still a rookie, instructed to execute orders of cleaning up unclaimed mistakes in the corrupt system that he willingly fallen into. His breath seethed, and icy blue eyes were filled with virulent contempt and dismay. "I protected you when our bastard of a father made those ears of yours bleed...Now you're gonna to ditch me because of my job?"_

_"You're not worth following, Barn," Clint protested irated, setting his lips into a firm grimace. He crossed his tone arms over his wrinkled; unbutton shirt, leveling his older and dead-weight sibling with an unyielding gaze of discontent. He wasn't going to become a leashed dog again, he was choosing a road to freedom with a new identity that would get him out into the world_ — _Hawkeye_ — _not a deadbeat circus stowaway from the corn fields of Iowa._

_Sighing out his frustrations, Clint curled his into a fist, rage pulsing in his veins. He couldn't reason with Barney, not when his own survival depended on his act. "The work you do for that big shot is just another careless performance. Yeah, you're skills have improved, but you're still just a thief repaying a countable debt."_

_Without a hint of warning, Barney lunged at him, locking his crushing elbow roughly into his throat, "I'm not the thief here, hot shot." he scowled, his blue eyes glowing with retained ire. "What I do and the choices I make are to keep out family alive. You think I like my job, the nightmares I face ..."_

_He gritted his teeth, shaking his head in displeasure; he didn't release his vise grip. "You steal wallets for a man that will cut you deep, Clint, and I take lives to ensure that you and Kate have future outside a grave."_

_Grasping for pants of breath, Clint grasped his brother's muscled forearm, wrenching it away with disarming strength. "Back off, Barn," he snarled, as his gaze fell on the gun, sleek and tempting. He literally seized up, refusing to yield. Barney didn't relent. Tension between them grew into a raw haze of repossessed dominance. "I'm not a killer," he disputed, his voice straining with each lungful. "Not like you."_

_Barney narrowed his steeled eyes at the floor. His anger was growing rancid. "If you sign that contract with those freaks, you will become one, Clint," he scolded, pressing his arm harder, before stepping away to relive his brother from choking. He turned his back, swiped the gun off the mattress, and pointed the nozzle at Clint's unflinching shadow. "...make no mistake about that, little brother."_

_"You're wrong, Barn," Clint winced harshly; brushing his hand over the side of his neck, a trail of blood seeped from his ruptured ear. Barney seemed dead to him, just a detached memory of his abusive past. He deserted them, left his Ma and siblings to endure heavy amounts of pain and scars because of his restless spirit and the only reason why he came back to the farm was to repay his debt to a promise that had been broken._

_It had to be the last time. No more misery or accepting cheap, invalid warranties of rebuilding a better life on the directionless road. He was following a different path, straying away from his brother's intimating shadow. He wanted to fly solo._

_Feeling tears settling in his eyes, Clint rested his palm over his bloodied ear, and fought against reluctance as spare a look at his fuming brother through his disheveled strands of mussed russet hair veiling his slacken brow. "I'm never going to fire a gun on a marked target...My arrows will be used for performance, not termination."_

_Barney shook his head, glancing at his firearm. "We had something together, and I failed to take care you-I failed Ma because of my hate towards everything...I promised myself that I would never become that drunken bastard, and now I've become something worse. I'm not army man, just a weapon...A trick shot."_

_"Stop defending yourself..."_

_He lifted his teary eyes at Clint, pleading to him, before throwing the gun down. "There's always a way to out," he whispered lowly, trying to become the big brother who swore to keep him safe. "Don't make the same bad calls I did, Clint," He inched closer, ripping a piece off his sleeve, and tentatively dabbed it over the riled teenager's red stained neck. He stared deeply into Clint's hardened eyes, before adding, "...make the right one."_

* * *

He'd endured, trained and perfected in ways that gave him remote confidence to achieve the impossible against moral weakness. Pain became his strength, and his arrows pierced through every shadow that threatened to devour him.

Regain clarity from the hazed of his fading memories, Clint focused on Natasha, staring into her confiding, radiant grayish-emerald eyes, before admitting the realness of his indebted confession to her.

Breathing in a deep exhale, he caressed her knuckles with a gentle, assuring touch, and curved his lips into an effortless smile. "You saved my ass many times, and yet you're still claiming that you owe me a debt because of the choice I made to save you from those KBG bastards, Tasha."

Natasha regarded him steadily, noticing the harsh pitch of his voice lighten. "Clint..."

"Whatever road you decide to take, Nat," he gave her a softhearted response, clenching his fingers over her small, poised hand. He smiled weakly, despite the pinch agony in his heart; he was releasing her to another inexperienced, good partner. It was time to cut the strings, and let her follow the light. He made the right call. "I will always have your back."

Natasha gave him a curvy smirk, returning an equal,  _unbreakable_  promise. "So will I, Agent Barton."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

**{Trapped in the Moment}**

** **

* * *

Somehow, Natasha had allowed herself to become compromised. Secrets had been decrypted, and the words of Clint Barton lingered in the recesses of her mind. It was a laborious road to take, but the undulating question was embroiled on the surface of her disobedient heart: was it worth making the right choice in surrendering herself to a childish fairy tale?

During the trialing years before her graduation ceremony; Natasha had read passages from the books that she salvaged at the boarding school; old fantasies that ended with a cursed maiden embracing true love. Impossible as it was for her to fathom, she was ever so curious to unveil if there was such a possible ending to her grim story. Maybe it was her chance to face the past without feeling the impulse to run away?

Scolding with undeviating frustrations, her steeled grayish eyes wandered over the remaining discarded pieces of Captain America's navy blue, stealth combat uniform. The embossed centered star gathered faint reflections of the caressing moonlight filtering through the glass panes of the surrounding windows.

'Don't give in, Romanoff,' she chided, searching for an escape from the discontent broiling in her veins. 'You don't deserve a chance to love him, not when you're a blood-thirsty killer of men. D'yavol's child—a miscreation that will burn with the ashes, holding requiems of the orphan children slain by her dark sins.'

Desperation pinned against her bones, and then Natasha risked an intense stare; being pulled into the fierce, steadfast azure eyes of the timeless, dignified soldier, who she had claimed to be her equal partner. That was before everything fell array into scattered pieces because of her disregard to his commanding-principled-authority.

'Remember your place in this world, Natalia...You are the last Black Widow.'

They were dangerously close. Parallel. Darkness and light. For the first time in days, they met the other's piercing and matching stare; looking for a reason to believe in the value of their partnership, while expunging their present, undivided and impending complications.

"Why do you insist on allowing yourself to trust me, Rogers?" she asked blatantly, almost reverent. She tried to find another motive for disregarding the pulsating desires of her marred heart. She didn't expect to feel violated to the core. It was abnormal—sickening. No one could breach her marmoreal exterior. She never accepted warmth; the blaze of man's heart kindling against her ensconced organ.

Clint had spared her life, not for cherishing throes of dominating aspects of love games, but to grant her a chance for repentance—to reinvent herself into a new, prestigious woman of independence and occasional mercy while in a SHIELD uniform.

It had become her committed mission to uphold a promise, to ultimately restore the damage, singed threads of her past vices. "You know that I'm not good person, Steve." she spoke with an unsavory timbre in her voice."That I have debts to pay..." she swallowed thickly, refusing to break through her intense, degraded conditioning.

Her posture was solid, unwavering under his towering shadow. Natasha crossed her toned arms over her breasts, and strays of scarlet, disheveled ringlets loosened from the tied bundle gathered up in her low pony tail. The black tri-weaved material of her tactical suit had frayed with tears on the shoulders, and the zipper was half way done up; purposely revealing a bare hint of alabaster cleavage.

Her disarmed visage offered a necessary distraction to keep the super-soldier unfocused during their duel of wits. She remained dismissive and calculating to the wafting scent of blood loitering in the air. "I have ledgers to wipe clean with the names of lives my past has ruined."

Leaning against the door, in a rigid posture, Steve grounded his statuesque, athletic body; holding her devious gaze while his expression remained stoic and reserved in the casts of shadow. The afterglow of muted light gleamed through unkempt ashen-blond tresses hooded over his luminous, stormy azure eyes as he intently focused on the unexpected stillness crawling over her obscured, complex features.

He was stripped from his uniform; only the dark blue tactical pants hugged at his 'V' shaped waistline. Ridges of hard, compacted muscle gleamed with feverish sweat; giving her a desiring effect to engage when the tensed moment became unwarranted.

Inexplicably, Steve felt on edge and angered; mostly because the gashes of her betrayal were still embedded in his left shoulder.

Lines had been crossed with them. His moral limits were becoming corrupted by her residual intrusion. He refused to allow her to succeed, to walk away without giving up her confession that stirred inside her. It had seemed unbearable to him at first, to believe in something that felt invalid. Being trapped in the fathoms of ice, his chances to discover love had been frozen against his heart. He didn't know what defined the conditions of love; he never experienced the commitment, assurance and need.

"You can't put your faith into me, Rogers," she spoke in raw unnerved volume, evident to her intentional warning. Steve watched the fullness of her lips press into a taunt grimace of betrayal. She was creating distance between them. Holding her guard up, and refused to compromise with the resonance welled in his azure eyes.

She had to admit the stone cold hard truth, no matter how much she tried to conceive a distorted lie. "I'm not someone who has your back." She leveled, the husky edge of her voice wavered with incompleteness. Compressed breath ghosted over his tensed skin. "In my unfriendly world, I walk in darkness, and everything I carry is results in the error of my ways."

When she didn't hear a response, she persisted with a sharpness in her invasive tone. Her hand possessively gripped the budge of Steve's leaden arm, harboring him back as he seemed far away. He tensed, fighting to awake from the dim haze clouding over his dismal eyes, like a dark ominous storm that rotated over clear, tranquil waves of azure.

She caught a glimpse of lightning, intense and fierce streaking through the depth of his pupils; it wasn't until she realized that she had gone too far, reaching further into the rages of the storm. "Cap," she whispered gently as the intoxicating scent of vodka and strawberry coiled in his throat—the Widow's dangerous aura.

After listening to the oppressive silence; Steve blinked in response of her voice resounding in his sounds. Receding an involuntarily step back, he held her stare even; languishing in the solemn ambiance of the hazy flecks of moonlight casting over the chiseled edges of his angular face. Steve bated out a heavy sigh, and felt his heart wrench against the bare planes of his chest.

He didn't expect the Soviet spy to understand, or to even care, but trying to reignite hope back into himself was a battle of testing his moral limits.

"Stop pretending that your care about me, Agent Romanoff," he issued out in frustration, a hint of disgust laced in his baritone. Natasha tore her gaze, detecting his bottled agony growing more potent. A taut grimace crept over his lips, and his fervid blue orbs leveled sternly at her falsified, devious expression. His dismissal was reverent. She understood his pain, the memories of regret that plagued his conscious when he walked alone in the shadows of gravestones and read the names of his friends.

"I know how to look after myself," he stubbornly objected. Feeling no sympathy evident in her grayish eyes, the soldier pressed the heel of his palm against the door frame; refusing to surrender to reason, and then gritted his teeth, enduring another surge of torment.

When he was recruited into the SSR, Steve learned that a mission must be completed with effective speed, accuracy, and efficiency. The kill-zone involved extreme conditions, lives were always at risk, and there were so many variables. When facing the obstructions of enemy ground, he'd mastered the dexterity to acknowledge when impending danger crossed his path, and then wasted no effort in making the right choice when lives hung in the balance. He was a soldier to the core, focused on the mission at hand—looking for vulnerabilities that can be exploited to solve the problem without putting lives in danger.

"I don't need you to watch my back," he clearly explained, holding off the gruff edge scraping up his throat. "Your type of business doesn't concern lives, just succession in collecting intelligence for men who likes to gamble with their own demons."

A glacial pace of torrents flooded in Steve's veins, his knuckles cracked and his eyes burned with ire; he narrowed a vexing gaze on the piled array of unraveled bandages stained with his blood gathered on the floor next to his shield.

Evidence of her careless actions in securing hostages. It cut him deep, knowing that she wasted the minimal time in pulling the hostages out, because she wanted to chase after a rogue KBG agent. He had to lay down the ground rules of their partnership; force her to meet his terms. "You're not a soldier, you don't know the first rule of survival!"

Fire tore into her lungs, it was her beyond her control. She glared back at him, angered, and unwilling to yield under his shadow."You don't know what I've done to get a chance to feel again, Rogers," she spat, wearing the mask of indifference.

Unfathomable emotions stirred inside Natasha; harboring thoughts lulled her back to the defining, unnerved moment of facing the soul carbon truth etched against layers of unsettled regrets. For days, she'd been distancing herself from the unbidden truth.

Shadows cloaked over her; hiding the surfaces of pain when she walked down the halls, drifting into the void. She craved for release against the unyielding illusions of red that merged into nightmares.

It was a torturous road she took. Fighting. She wasn't prepared to face a dream. A second chance. Men believed that she walked among the angels, but she was a devil created to seduce, devour and slay; condemned to feel nothing. Coldness. Death... Venom. She couldn't pull herself away from that, no good man could be her salvation. What she'd accomplished, succeeded, and ruined were acts of ingrained betrayal: the Black Widow was a dark weaver of spindling lies, poisonous bites and seclusion. She could never be a friend… a wife... or a mother. Acceptance was necessary to survive another hellish road of the past.

The unstoppable Black Widow was trained to show no submission of defeat, to remain resilient, oppose grief and obstruct guilt—burying every tear into unbreakable marble.

At the moment, Natasha was disarmed—compromised—by wrenching, unexpected attachments. Trust had become a splinter in her altered heart; an exposed and deep wound was ripping a layer apart, blood was making a slow descent into her murky soul.

Partnerships were created by foundations starting from the beginning; every structure had to be equally leveled to obtain balance—strength. Everything was crumpling down again because of her devious acts of misguidance and her lack of solidarity. She disobeyed a direct order, took a senseless risk and displayed no empathy to the number lives counting on an Avenger to save them.

Life wasn't her mission—profession. The unwarranted spider of the Red Room wasn't a hero, no choices of sacrifice pulsed in her veins. Monsters don't save people. She was meant to be feared, not to give into warmth of assurance, just a cold touch of merciless dread.

A hero was grounded by decision, benevolence and the utmost of responsibility. Captain Steven Rogers was more than a wartime poster boy for the justifiable concepts of truth and liberty; he was a guardian angel against the rise of demons; his rare alloy shield was his silver wings and his piercing azure embers held unyielding, determined fire.

Steve was real, strong and compassionate; reaffirmed to his duties as a committed soldier who preserved the hope that still lingered in humanity. He didn't wear masks...his heart was exposed. He could bleed if a bullet cut him deep.

Natasha defiled the hope of grasping onto threads of earned freedom; eluding her tainted presence away from his shielding grace and made the man that knew her better than herself to taste lead.

Now, she was fighting the mere stirrings, embracing the irrefutable truth of her reckoning in the furls of emotional chaos and deception. She had to believe that some form of good existed beyond her masks.

It had taken Natasha a long time to grasp onto the right ideals, to become human again. She'd ventured through the shadows, discovering more haunting truths hidden about her unforgiving, stolen past—hunting down noxious phantoms; effacing the remnants of blood trails that led deeper into the harsh fathoms of red, dark and endless.

Putting her trust in a refined soldier of righteous distinction allowed her to feel the cathartic release that she'd craved.

The appetite for redemption made her feed off his pure heart, filling her lethal instincts with a sense of purpose that had once existed. Burying the visages of her demons wasn't enough to satisfy the need of restoring what had been stolen from her.

There was no succession or certainty in what resided in her core, of what scraped against her deformed heart, and beckoned her to give into the lurid, overwhelming hunger of destroying another life. Holding back the vicious impulses only prevented intoxicating desires from bleeding out, while it felt like she was bargaining with death in a repeated lapse of abashed pain.

Desperation was prickling in her veins, the torturous imagery of needles draining and faceless children retook possession of the tampered recesses of her falsified metal fortitude. Demoralized apparitions of Aleksander Lukin and Vasily Karpov—the obsessed and sarcastic devils of KBG army division of lunacy, obedience and pain: Department X.

Their corrupted taste for power had abused, butchered and erased preserved memories of her deceased parents; replacing childhood innocence with impurity.

_The coldness of the gun's nozzle grazed over the hinge of her bruised jaw, as the sobs lessened at the moment leather fingers coiled around her graceful neck. Scarlet curls swathed over her blemished, feverish cheeks, her wilted head veered back at the sight of a syringe moving closer to her bounded forearm; veins pulsed and levels of heart rate increased._

_When she felt the merciless squeeze of her handler; Natalia flinched with a responsive jolt of pain, eliciting a voiceless mewl from her split lips; like a tortured kitten._

_"You were selected to become my favored weapon, little girl," Karpov ejected, gritting his tensed jaw in a displeased manner, while affixing his deaden eyes on her disheveled body. "We have no time for disorder in our ranks. You must not falter when you taste death. As you know, many of the strays show weakness and hold onto memory of their parents who abandoned them, but those who fail their tests are thrown in graves just like the remains of their families."_

_Listening to the array of spiteful words; Natalia's slacken face paled, and she watched, transfixed, at the syringe being filled with another concoction of serum. But there was a strange coloring merging with the based chemical; almost like the clogging blood of a spider._

_A Black Widow._

_Her body felt leaden; and numbness prickled deep into the marrow of her bones when the puncture of the needle awoke her senses. It was a surge of continuous pain, increasing as she clung into reserves of defiance. She wanted to prove to her debased master, that she was strong enough to endure, to become unbreakable and never allow humanity to intervene with the missions._

_When she finally could muster enough words; she gripped onto her measures of strength, and allowed her body to feel the deserved punishment. "Please," she gasped in a struggling breath, and trembled stiffly in the chair. "I won't fail." Tears welled up in her widened eyes. "I won't break..."_

_"Enough," Karpov hissed dangerously, his glare boring into her skull. "All I hear is lies from your lips, Natalia. Worthless, impure lies that mean nothing in granting you freedom. You are strong in will, but you lack certain qualities that I need to ensure that every order I give to my soldiers is written in blood, not the pathetic tears of a street orphan."_

_He waved the gunman off and inched closer, squatting down to her level. His hands splayed over her cold legs, moving slightly upward; until he recoiled back and stared at the leakage of tears streaking over her sickly features. "Ivan had faith in you, a small amount to keep you alive when revolutionary rebel soldiers tried to claim your life, isn't that right?"_

_Natalia needed to answer. Her heart twinged when it felt as if an icy stake penetrated through her ample chest. "Ivan saved me from the fire that took my mother." She dipped her head down, squeezing her eyelids shut for a moment of recollection."I don't remember much after that night," she swore._

_The room blurred into spiraling flashes of red, voices droned through damp structures and the smell of decay wafted in every corner. Swallowing down her tears, tasting blood was another purpose of her survival. "I don't hold onto anything," she managed to peep out after a release of continuous sobs, gathering up the reminders of her voice. Tears blotted her unfocused vision. "That is the truth, General Karpov."_

_"Do you know what happens when our girls cry, little Natalia?" Karpov asked, with no emotion dinging in his voice._

_He straightened to his full height and cuffed his hands behind his back as his blurred face came into her resolve. When she didn't answer, he lunged at her, pressing his thumb into the swollen vein, and bore a soulless, livid glare into her pounding skull. "Answer me, child..." He commanded with a harsh slap against her face; jerking her head to the side. Heat flared onto her stinging cheek. She was on the verge of intertwining with darkness. "Answer me, little dancer, unless you want to die like my other failures?"_

_Natalia spat out blood, choking as thrums of her pacing heartbeat pulsed in her ears._

_She refused to deny the harrowing and inhumane truth—each classmate that failed to impress their marble faced instructors were executed during the morning sparring matches; friends devoured life and separated bones; leaving only a remnant of tears in remembrance of their shadow._

_It was becoming an infectious plague that consumed innocence, the girls of her class no longer carried value nor grace, only a mark—an embolden pledge to the Red Room. "They become ghosts that haunt the halls." She looked down, watching her fallen tears mix with drops of crimson. "They become nothing more than erased memories."_

"Natasha..." His urgent, lulling voice sounded distance, clashing with the storm that availed in her heart. There was no going back. Phantoms were clawing at her flesh, stripping her down into marble encased bones. She lost her balance, unstable and desperate to grip onto an anchor to pull her out of the collapsing void. "Nat, is everything okay?"

She was highly aware of the measure of comfort ghosting in his baritone. She vaguely recognized the utter concern, the forgiveness—he never held resentment towards her. With an absent impulse, she matched his steadfast gaze, staring into the fierce embers of blue that held no derision against her.

Why was she holding onto his sentiment? It was a childish attachment for the weak-hearted...She wanted to cut the strings. Captain America wasn't a part of her world. His moral foundation was something that repelled her because she allowed her brutal training to resurface when Steve needed her to watch his back. All while he lifted the charred plank off a little girl's unconscious body, instead of chasing after a rogue KBG agent—Nikia Brasilva.

_The grayness of moonlight light crawled over her pale features. Natasha struggled to regain balance, her back pressed against the cement wall. Blood trickled from the open gash on her forehead. Stray drops stained the leather of her jacket. Her skin was heated with a brush of fever. Veins pulsed and her vision blurred as she held her quad against the man's throat. She squeezed the life out of him._

_Electric shocks ignited from her blue glowing Widow Bites as she rammed her fists into his armored chest, and delivered a rapid jolt of her string into his ribs. She gritted her teeth. Her gums became numb as the sour taste of tainted copper dripped over the rawness of her throat._

_It was a struggle between life and death; muscles grinding against the steel gate._

_Bones crushed as she constricted her brute force into his neck, twisting and choking him. She wanted to see him die by her hands. She wanted blood. Raveling her leg harder, she relentlessly jerked his head forward, listening to the bones snap. Within seconds of collecting her breath, her green eyes glowered, and she watched his dark eyes roll back into the sockets. He was dead._

_Spitting up a gob of blood, Natasha rigidly tried to hoist her lithe frame up against the wall. The amount of blood seeping from her wounds prevented her. Releasing a sharp gasp, she slammed her laden arms against the cement and cursed under her frustrated breath. She had been compromised. Pain surged through her entire body. Blood was racing in her veins like torrents as has each pulse became a wicked spasm against her pounding heart._

_She couldn't blink the red haze out of her eyes; the world was blurred around her. No light. Just darkness. All she focused on was the maroon puddle building underneath the body of the rogue KBG agent she had identified as an attack dog of Demetrius Sabov—a Russian mercenary and butcher of a dozen America operatives. He was considered a highly unpredictable, resolvable and lethal. He murdered good men by using tactics ingrained into his sordid mind from the Red Room. He was one of the selected to carry out covert missions in the heart of Romania. Natasha believed that he truly had been alerted to suck blood out of the jugular veins of his victims. He was a monster._

_Inside and out._

Underestimating her skilled tactics of situational awareness, Natasha had taken an impulsive, disregarding risk and left Steve in the line of fire. When she arrived, puddles of his enhanced blood had splayed over the cement, and his massive body was laden and immobilized. It had been a cruel game of downplayed emotions; she had stared at the harrowing, resentful visages of damage.

She'd been so careless with dominance—brazen and stubborn. Feeling like she owed Steve a debt, repentance crushed her disobedient heart. Her cold motives had ensnared the naive captain into her web, used him as distraction to save her own skin. She didn't deserve his forgiveness; her past sins had emerged and blood was shed.

"No," Natasha winced falsely, clenching her jaw while clinging to reserves of her dominance. "I hurt you, Steve," Her voice seemed raw and unnatural. Tangles of shadows were condemning her to bleed out a valid, guilty confession when her penetrating eyes glanced at the strips of gauze marked with smears of his blood.

Just another reminder of her betrayal— more red on her ledger. "You trusted me with your life and I betrayed that trust because I know that it could never be real with me."

The furrow of his brow creased into hardened, severe, disquiet lines before he drew out an honest answer. "If I didn't trust you, Natasha, then we wouldn't be standing here together," he said, firmly, his wintry gaze fixed into the floor, regret stirring in his core.

"When Fury assigned me as your partner, I never spoke out against his decision. I respected it. I'm not trying to take Barton's place, since he is your best friend, and a good man in his own right." Steve spoke up in a pensive tone; giving her an effective veritable answer that he'd hoped would breach through her sealed, adamantine walls.

After releasing a despondent breath, Steve felt sweat near his eyes, stinging when he fixedly observed the Black Widow's feral, ingenious and indecipherable countenance that melted into a fractured desolate expression. He tried to stare beyond her weaves of abated pain that she tried to hide."We make an exceptional team," he entreated, reeking of honesty. "...you and I, and mind you we do have our differences, but at the end of the day, somehow we always come out stronger than before."

Natasha scolded at him, icy and impenetrable. She pressed hard on her coy lips, forming a sour grimace. Heat spread through her bones. The grating constant impulse to runaway consumed turbulent concessions of her thoughts. She needed to create some distance between them, before irrational desires would gain the full effect on her. "We're don't share the same morals, Steve. In fact, I believe I don't carry any."

_Unbelievable_ , Steve thought, boring his intense stare into hers. "You never make it easy, do you, Natasha?" he intoned evenly, his lips pursed into a firm line. "I'm trying to set things right between us, and you're just playing another game."

She shrugged, nonchalantly. He watched with a deepened stare, the alluring shades of her eyes absorbed the shadows of the room. "It's what I do, Rogers," she replied her voice carried a din of haunted grief.

He shook his head, tearing his gaze away from her, and pinned his eyes on the shield. Natasha watched his resigned countenance morph into a disheveled, broken expression. He looked unintentionally crushed. "I thought you were more than your file, Natasha," he grounded out, his jaw hardened."... but I guess that's just another lie." With that, he spared a quick, intending glance at her unreadable features. Dismayed, he stepped out into the hall.

Something roared inside her, and she carnally lunged at him without a second to reclaim her decision. The slick planes of his back slammed forcefully against the wall, and her curves arched against the ridges of his abdomen. Feeling her palms splay over his pectorals, Steve released a heavy, alarming gasp, and evened his fixated state to her livid eyes. Red lightning flashed, dangerously. His blood was surging with hot torrents as her breath coiled over his flushed skin. She mercilessly teased for a moment, keeping him on edge.

"Natasha," he hitched a breath, trying to pry her arms off his shoulders. Feeling an encroaching sense twist in his gut, he reacted with a hitching breath. "Cut it out..."

Her face darkened into a ravenous semblance, her lithe fingers gripped his muscles as he protested against his will. She knew the weak points of the human body, and her polished nails felt like needles, digging into the feverish skin of her prey. His strength fused with her possessive clutch, assaulting his rigid body. There was a vast etching of emotions riding over his chiseled, enthused face. He looked trapped, struggling to rip himself away from her. "Don't worry, Cap, this is simple trust exercise that I use to practice a lot with men," she coaxed in a malevolent purr, knowing that he didn't seem convinced. "Well, maybe the ones who didn't try to kill me."

"I'm not like those men, I have limits," he warned, while also shuddering through gritted teeth, seizing her wrist into the firm grip of his hand.

Natasha curled her lips into a deviant smirk, relishing the control of the moment."And I'm going to enjoy breaking all of them—"

Cringing against her brazen aim, his eyes creased, matching the darkness of her gaze. Only faint blue crescents reflected in the light. "Not tonight," he growled using the effective baritone of Captain America. He twisted her arm to his side and spun her fully around with a graceful, effortless twirl. She aligned her back uncomfortably against his dense torso; calculating her equivocal motives to devour him; but his broad arm secured over her waist, and her head inadvertently rested on his wounded shoulder; mounting heat wavered off her lips—so close to his burning throat.

Inhaling her enthralling scent, he discarded all rational thoughts of engaging the moment; sliding his fingers under the edge of her jaw. He tilted her head to meet the soft expanse of his desiring lips, and shadowed her pale skin; his forehead rested against hers. Every pulse of her breath gliding smoothly over his flexed jaw seemed unhindered—perilous; drawing him in to take the plunge and test his restrictions; to fully open himself up to her without the logical reasoning of the soldier drying out the unquenchable thirst he craved for seventy years.

"Natasha," his voice conveyed a heady, raw pitch of breath. Steve paced himself, tentatively joining her claret tinted lips in unison—a rare, serrated connection he'd never shared with any Brooklyn dame—not even Peggy. She was lethal and alluring, but he was longing to taste vehement fire on his urging lips. Taking considerable amount of delay to permit his lips; Steve became unable to resist the swell of his heart. For a brief, nonsensical moment, he felt stable enough to kiss her. Breath raveled in his chest. His coaxing mouth collided with a cautious brush against the fullness of her lips; there was relief coursing in his veins and he felt immensely released; melting against her lips as sparks ignited and wet heat merged into a solid embrace of equal, accepting warmth.

Closing his eyes, Steve was absorbing the sweetness of her taste seeping into his mouth. He pressed his swollen lips harder; digging his nose into her cheek and felt the pulse of her throbbing flesh outmatch his empowering interlock, until she detached and allowed him to stare into the light bleeding through the darkness in her eyes. He smiled, frozen in the moment with her; whispering hotly over her flushed, sated mouth, "One down...Three to go..."

Natasha looked at him, enthralled, and her eyebrow arched. "What does that mean?"

"You'll figure it out," he smirked, and his blue eyes held a teasing glint.

 


	15. Chapter 15

  **Chapter 15**

**{Twilight Bliss}**

** **

 

It became a testament of courage and faith. She never once believed the impossible, that even the simplest of things that many took for granted could become real.

The world was cruel, different shades of red and the blood she spent cost many restless nights of turning back to each moment of pulling the trigger. She was sentenced to live in the darkness-to become the dark, and to never allow warmth to blaze in her scarred and violated heart.

As time passed and tensed moments became gentle caresses of hope, Natasha found herself staring into a void of choice. Acceptance had been never received through the acts of survival, through the avails of pain and torturing nightmares—her life was tangled in strings, soul dangling on red thread dipped in blood of her victims. She couldn't pay the debts of her sins, fight for freedom, not on her own.

She gazed into the sunlight reflecting in calm ripples of the lake, early froze lingered on the reeds sticking out of the muck, and there was daunting chill wavering in the air.

Bundled in a hooded sweater, Natasha sat on the edge of the creaking dock, her lithe and curvaceous body secured in layers of wool and denim. Copper locks, radiant and full were draped over her ivory features, hiding visible freckles.

In the clutch of her hand, was a wooden cross, a small treasure that once belong to Sarah Rogers, for it was in her dire moments of testing her immeasurable faith, that Sarah held the cross pendent close to her heart when she delivered Steve with no family standing at her side, not warmth to embrace her in the happiness moment of watching her infant son open his blue eyes for the first time to see the world in the vestiges of innocence.

"How can I deserve this?" she questioned in low abated breath. Her finger slid over the wood. "I'm not a good person. The things I've done have ruined so much value of lives. My ledger is red and I don't deserve to have a conventional life."

Natasha was living in the afterlife, her unwillingly choices to execute had marred her soul into remnants of regret. She had lost everything, her name, memories, and humanity. It was necessary to endure; made everything feel disconnected, even when she received orders to steal another life. During the first week of every December since she recruited in the ranks of SHIELD, Natasha would retrace her past and search for graves that had etching of false names of her classmates-failures and ghosts, who were given no redemption; just marble and withering flowers marking a pile of dirt.

Sighing out a dismal hitch of breath, Natasha huddled into warmth of the navy blue sweater, utilizing it as layer of protection against the sudden disturbance of a cold breeze, scraping over her paled cheeks, frays of copper ghosted over her lips, giving her a sense of isolation. She had become so immune with keeping distance, for years.

Today, she wanted to relish into secured embrace of his arms. Nothing compared to the sense of acceptance, when his body served as a shield against the cold gales. Her quality of life depended on self-preservation and alertness, not allowing a virtuous and pure man to become an anchor -even though she would try to replicate her emotions, wore semblances of coyness and deception, it was just an effective performance to hide the victim beyond the masks.

"You can't pretend for him, Natalia," she murmured with a detached voice, fighting to understand what truly existed in her core. Her muscles tensed as the wool of her sweater melded against her skin.

Streaks of fading rose from the twilight canvas above her, contrasted in the rims of teal, piercing through the obscurity of her eyes. A few loose tendrils danced with calm breeze, she tucked her knees against her chest, resting her chin on the stiff denim. For a rare moment, the Black Widow became a hostage of intangible despair; vaguely choosing to disarm herself, when she stole a glance at her left scarred wrist. "He won't take the pain away. You won't let him."

After, staring at the ripples in the steady water, she placed the cross on the dock boards, with gentle ease, despite the urge to stuff it inside her pocket. She knew, that the cross was a symbol of strength and unbreakable hope, and it belonged to Steve, and if treasure of Sarah Rogers was meant for her, than she would wait for him to place it back into her hands. She couldn't be saved.

Deep in the fathoms of her tortuous and relenting soul, Natasha needed a grasp onto a purpose that wasn't conceived with killing; but she wasn't intact, whole and free. She was alone to face her own horde of demons; regardless of Clint Barton trailing her shadow, when she decided to chase footprints of red.

She ran. Daring her nightmares to follow her, faster and until breath ceased to exist in her lungs. She never wanted to treat a relationship as a performance, with different acts of an impermanent love affair that would end with Steve's promise written in blood; she refused to believe in the irrefutable, hell-bent choices of allowing her heart to feel capable to fight for his love.

Over the years of rebuilding different covers, she had never questioned herself, always allowed the winding regrets to control her, disallowing truth to permit a confession; she couldn't restore those emotions, or lure Steve in the web of her thousand lies, unattached threads and tainted silk dabbed in the blood of her incalculable sins.

In the glimpses of her unforgiving past, Natasha had lost her true identity in a twisting void, using wrenched heart ache as a distraction to release everything. "Who do I want to be?" she whispered coldly, catching a tear with a gentle swipe her finger before the salty remnant slid down her chilled skin. The serpentine tongue of Loki's malice filled voice shackled her, and the scars reacted to the laboring pulse.

Feeling the daunting iciness of the Trickster's spite, Natasha instantly closed her eyes; torrents of blood rushed a violent course in her veins. She didn't want to remember that haunting moment.

Natasha felt a reproach of panic elevate in her bones. Furious with plaguing condemnation, she clenched her hand into a fist. A scream was animating in her chest, but after a dry sob, she had managed to resist the constant shifts of torment.

"I'm a killer, lair and a monster...Not an Avenger, just a victim of circumstance." Tears burned against her sealed eyelids, and she fought against the evidence of her pain. "I don't deserve to dance with Steve. I think he needs to find another partner, because I will just keep on letting him-"

"Thought I'd find you out here," Her eyes opened in second the cadence of his earnest, and firm baritone wavered in the air. She didn't turn around, for once in her life, she felt hesitance ripple through her. Of all the times they've worked together, closeness of the unexpected-disarming moments, unlocked confessions and devoted trust that sparked the possibility of something more than a friendship.

This unmistakable moment, felt groundless, unsettling to chase as Natasha regained composer, putting on the act; omitting her submitted emotions, her lips curved into a false, hiding the damage. Her sharp gaze focused on the super-soldier, standing close enough for her to stare deeply into his stormy azure eyes, as he observed her countenance morph into a coy smirk.

Making little effort of awareness, Natasha used caution in her words, diverting his concern, she dared a glance, feelings were sent adrift when she took in his chiseled visage, he was everything she had wanted in a man—strong and benevolent, with a heart that couldn't surrender to weakness.

Steve was a rare сокровище, nothing compared to his fighting spirit, the fierce embers of his blue eyes and the commanding timbre of his voice that would always echo through the darkness. And the way he looked into obstructed eyes, the stillness of avid grace that he carried, made her feel more alive and welcomed into his world.

He never pinned her with judgment, or treated her as an abomination. He respected her with equality, trusting her limits and giving her a chance to embrace true salvation. Most importantly he believed in her.

Despite her ingrained motives of resistance, Natasha wanted solid validation that he truly accepted her as the world saw the Black Widow, a condemned murderess, weaver of lies and master of deception—the rawness of her contempt forced her to avail, and she couldn't summon her reservations. It was wrong and irrefutable to pull him into a risk, to taint the purity of his blood with the Red Room's venom.

Finally after fighting another emotional complex battle, she gazed into the intensity of his azure eyes; failing to express a despondent frown. "Well, some of us women do enjoy our distance, Rogers...Didn't your mother teach you that, um, I guess not."

Steve cleared his throat on emphasis, holding his guard up. "My Ma, taught me to always look after a beautiful dame," The deep pitch of his voice faltered, into almost a boyish octave of indistinct timidness. "Even when she tries her best to keep her distance."

"Oh, and what about if the dame has a gun?" she enticed in a malevolent purr, purposely sliding her finger over her thigh, touching the cold metal underneath denim. "I guess you will have no choice, but to keep your distance, soldier boy."

"I appreciate if we keep the name calling to the minimum, Tasha," He pointedly addressed, no admission was wavering in his voice, but faint smirk managed to twitch across his lips, weakly. His leveled blue eyes fell directly on her, attempting to breach her infrangible walls. "Beside I do heal fast, in case you didn't read that part on my file, that has been recently misplaced-"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Rogers," Natasha objected with a roguish glint in her eyes, attempting to hide her true intentions of using his file. "Blame Agent Hill, she is the one that handles the paperwork, since I do most of the grunt work."

"Yeah, after I do all the heavy lifting," he reminded her with a hint of frustration, resuming his rigid stance; he perceived what had been clearly unmasked in the pitch of her husky voice.

"Enough with the small talk, want you tell me what's really going on, Natasha?" he asked with a sigh, watching a tear land on the scuffed wood, light revealed so much to him in the brush of silence that crept over the lake.

Natasha tried to evade him, averting her eyes. She wanted isolation, time to retrace her mistakes. There was a small chance, that he could give her redemption, after all he did carry a symbol of ultimate forgiveness for seventy years in the ice, at the moment, she was fundamentally displaced, using wits to shadow her pain. "Nothing is wrong with me; I just need time to get it together..."

She clenched her jaw and looked at the frost gathering on the floating lilies. "People always say that life is full of choices, but they never reveal their consciences, and that's how we live, making choices that end up becoming our mistakes. There's no sense of reason when it comes to the end of the game," she declared softly. Temptation to pull out the gun was growing rancid, she had to harbor onto resilience and control, and not allow the past to claim her.

It took a few seconds for her to regather strength, regardless of being unraveled of the strings she had pulled apart, in order to feel human. Parts of her stolen life were hard to forget, her heart was straining to pound without the spike of dread incising through it. Undaunted by how simple a choice to love could be she used her lies to deform the wants and needs that resided within her. Lying had always been her strong front, interweaving the truth that couldn't be revealed.

"Natasha," he whispered with a measure of assurance in his tone. "This is what's keeping you away from getting close to the team?" He gingerly attempted to move another inch closer, edging towards her. His blue eyes held reverence, as he watched her pull the sweater's hood over the disheveled tresses of copper. He sensed the raging storm clashing in her; thralls of anguish. "Hey, you know that I'm always here to listen, so if you want talk about it, I'll stay here."

She managed to form her lips into a gentle smile at his effort to comfort her. "I think you have better things to do, than listening to my sad story, Rogers," she dismissed him with nonchalance shadowing her ivory features, tears stinging in her eyes. She became distance in that quick shift of emotion, unadulterated by the phantom clutches seizing over her wrists. "Don't worry about me, I know how to-"

"Whatever you're ready, I'll be right here for you, Natasha," he stole her words, with a genuine promise; easing his weight down on the rotting boards, and pulled out his sketch pad, and sharpened graphite pencils. His intent gaze settled on the small clusters of ever greens growing on peaks of jagged rock across the lake. It wasn't long, before he shaped the scenic view onto paper with light drag of the pencil. The biting wind ruffled through his unkempt blond hair, wispy bangs obstructed over the harden lines of his deepened brow, and when he dipped his head, Natasha stared at the serrated curves of his cheek bones tightened as he focused on the drawing.

"So this is how you spend your nights?" she questioned, watching the pencil move with the lightest ease of his steadied hand. "Drawing nature and other boring stuff?"

"I dunno, guess it sort of relaxes me," he admitted, with a sheepish grin. Then, he stuffed his hands into the pocket of his dark gray sweater; grabbing an eraser smudged with remnants of charcoal. "I love to draw everything that I see, it's something' that was never buried in the ice, and my Ma told me that I had the right stuff to become a famous artist."

His face fell and he recalled those memories, glints of olden sorrow gathering in his downcast blue eyes that he valiantly defied revealing. "I spent a lot of nights, drawing portraits to earn extra cash to pay for her medical bills when she got hit with TB. It wasn't easy living' back in Brooklyn, but I managed to give her all that I had during those years, since she had sacrificed so much for my life."

Natasha pressed her lips, trying to deflect the impulse to curl up against him; instead she drove her interest on the sketch pad resting on his lap. "I've never drawn before," she murmured as a delicate voice escaped her lips. "It was something that I always wanted to try, but I never really had chance to capture all the details since I lived mostly in the dark."

"Do you want me to teach you?" he offered reverently, placing the pad down. "Since it's a beautiful night, and I've got no... Plans?"

Without giving him a direct response, Natasha involuntarily moved closer at a cautious pace, looking back for a second and Steve spread his legs apart; giving her lithe frame room to lean against the muscle planes of his she lowered down, vulnerable light reflected in her eyes, that held vestiges of trust—connection.

She didn't recoil, didn't relent. She welcomed the empowering heat of his body, pressing her back against the solid ridges of his firm muscle, the hard wall of security. The barrage of tension faded, into bliss as his sculpted arms enveloped around her, and she felt miles away with him—no biting agony, irreparable wounds, just warmth—salvation—life.

Sighting out a whilst breath, Steve dropped his lips to her jaw, tentatively leaving a trail of wet heat with a soothing caress, as he intertwined her fingers with his, and lifted up with sketch pad. "What you feel like drawing?" he asked quietly over her ear, grabbing the pencil and sliding it against her palm. "Okay, here's a better question, what do you love to capture with your eyes, Natasha?"

Swallowing thickly, Natasha angled her head, meeting his stare, and encompassed her hand over his chiseled jaw, and answered with a steady exhale. "You-Your," she hitched out a confession vaguely, without realizing that her lips were a breadth away for claiming his mouth. The kindling fire in her chest doused the icy reproach of desperation.

Idly, her fingers rove back the pendent necklace in her pocket, which embers in her heart evolved into something real and undeniably valid. She gave him a short answer, with a tender smile, almost lost in the very words that ghosted over his chilled skin. "Maybe we can start with your shield, since this is my first lesson?"

"Of course," Steve smiled to himself, squeezing her hand with equal warmth. "We'll start with sketching out the center five pointed star and see where it goes."

Natasha rested her cheek on the crest of his shoulder, brushing her lips over his thick neck, as the gentle swell of her kiss possessed his pulse, allowing him to guide the sway of her hand; she felt the pencil drag over the paper. Both of them felt their hearts beating in unison as they stayed on the dock, falling into submission of their concealed desires. "See where it goes," she echoed in low breath, clinging onto his warmth.


End file.
